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Pylon is fully self-hostable, but if you’d rather not run it yourself, Pylon Cloud at cloud.pylonsync.com hosts the same binary you’d run on a VPS — same routes, same wire formats, same client SDKs. Sign up, point pylon deploy at it, and your app is live.

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When to use it

You should use Cloud if…You should self-host if…
You want to ship today, not learn opsYou have strict data residency / on-prem requirements
You don’t want to manage Postgres backups, TLS, scalingYou already operate Kubernetes / Nomad / your own VPS fleet
You’d rather pay per request than per serverYour workload spikes hard enough that reserved capacity is cheaper
You want managed magic-link email + OAuth credentials out of the boxYou need to run an air-gapped deployment
Both targets run the same binary. You can start on Cloud and migrate to self-hosted (or back) without touching client code — only the baseUrl changes.

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Sign up

  1. Visit cloud.pylonsync.com and create an account.
  2. Create a workspace. Each workspace gets a stable URL like https://your-app.pylon.app and an API key.
  3. Add a payment method (free tier covers small projects; see pricing below).

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Deploy from the CLI

# One-time: log in
pylon login

# From a Pylon project directory
pylon deploy --target cloud
pylon deploy --target cloud does:
  1. Builds your TypeScript functions with Bun
  2. Validates pylon.manifest.json
  3. Uploads the bundle + manifest to your workspace
  4. Runs migrations
  5. Cuts over traffic atomically (zero-downtime — old version drains)
You’ll get back a URL like https://your-app.pylon.app that your clients connect to. Subsequent deploys are incremental.

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Custom domains

pylon domain add app.example.com
Cloud provisions a TLS certificate (Let’s Encrypt) automatically. Add the displayed CNAME record to your DNS, wait a minute, and you’re live on the custom domain. Both the apex Cloud URL and your custom domain stay valid.

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Environment variables

Set per-workspace secrets without committing them to git: 
pylon env set STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_live_...
pylon env set OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
pylon env list
pylon env unset STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
These show up in your TypeScript functions as process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY. They’re encrypted at rest and never appear in logs.

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What’s included

  • Postgres — managed, with daily backups and point-in-time recovery up to 7 days
  • TLS — automatic Let’s Encrypt certificates on *.pylon.app and your custom domains
  • Magic-link email — managed transactional sender; no SendGrid/Resend account required
  • OAuth — bring your own Google/GitHub OAuth credentials, or use Cloud’s shared dev credentials in non-prod workspaces
  • WebSocket + SSE + shard ports — exposed automatically; clients connect to the public URL
  • File storage — S3-backed, included up to 10 GB on the free tier
  • Studio — every workspace has the inspector available at https://your-app.pylon.app/studio
  • Logs + metrics — request logs, function traces, and basic latency/error charts in the dashboard
  • Versioned deploys — pylon deploy --rollback reverts to the previous version

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Scaling

Cloud autoscales the HTTP, WebSocket, and shard tiers separately based on load. The usage-based pricing model means you don’t pre-provision — you pay for what you use. For multiplayer apps with sticky shard connections, set the shard region when creating the workspace so latency to your players is minimized:
RegionCode
US East (Ashburn)iad
US West (San Jose)sjc
EU (Frankfurt)fra
Asia (Singapore)sin
Multi-region replication is on the roadmap; for now each workspace lives in one region.

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Pricing

Usage-based, no monthly minimums:
ResourceFree tierBeyond free
HTTP requests1M / month$0.50 / 1M
WebSocket connection-minutes100K / month$0.10 / 100K
Postgres storage1 GB$0.20 / GB / month
File storage10 GB$0.02 / GB / month
Bandwidth (egress)100 GB$0.05 / GB
Magic-link emails1K / month$1.00 / 1K
Live pricing on the pricing page.

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Migrating from self-hosted

# 1. Snapshot your data
pylon backup ./snapshot/

# 2. Create the workspace (or use an existing empty one)
pylon login
pylon workspace create my-app

# 3. Restore into Cloud
pylon restore ./snapshot/ --target cloud
Then point your clients at the new baseUrl. Sessions are preserved (the session store is part of the snapshot), so users stay signed in.

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Migrating to self-hosted

# 1. Snapshot from Cloud
pylon backup ./snapshot/ --source cloud

# 2. Restore into your own deployment
pylon restore ./snapshot/
No lock-in. The binary is the same; the data format is the same.

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Troubleshooting

pylon deploy says “not authenticated” — run pylon login again. Tokens expire after 90 days. Custom domain stuck on “verifying” — DNS propagation can take up to 24 hours. dig CNAME app.example.com should show your *.pylon.app target. Magic-link emails not arriving — check the spam folder for the first send (Cloud uses a shared sender domain that warms up over time). For production, configure your own sender domain in Settings → Email to authenticate with SPF/DKIM/DMARC under your domain. WebSocket disconnects — Cloud’s load balancer holds connections for up to 4 hours; the sync engine handles reconnects automatically with full-jitter backoff. If you see frequent drops, check connection state in the dashboard.

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Status

status.pylonsync.com shows live region health and incident history.