About PocketBay — straight answers
Direct answers about PocketBay positioning, supported stacks, deployment, pricing, sleep, databases, security, and how we differ from other hosts.
What is PocketBay?＋
PocketBay is an AI-native app deploy and hosting platform. AI understands your project locally and starts deploy; the platform handles constrained builds, health checks, domains, HTTPS, logs, and app runtime lifecycle.
Who is PocketBay for?＋
Individual developers and small teams using Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and similar AI coding assistants — especially for shipping prototypes, tools, landing pages, and monolithic web services quickly.
What stacks are supported?＋
Static sites, Next.js, general Node.js web services, Python web services, and single-container web apps with your own Dockerfile.
Do I need Docker or server ops?＋
Usually not. Standard Node.js, Next.js, and Python projects get generated build files from the platform; advanced users can supply their own Dockerfile.
Why does deploy need browser authorization?＋
After AI creates a deploy session, you confirm the project name and deploy type so an agent cannot upload or deploy the wrong project without approval. Auth uses a one-time pairing link — no long-lived token to copy.
Do apps sleep?＋
Yes. Dynamic apps sleep after roughly 10 minutes with no real traffic and wake on the next visit. Pure static sites are served directly by the gateway — no always-on container.
Are databases supported?＋
Yes for PostgreSQL: you can provision a per-project managed database, or migrate schema/data during one-line AI deploy (DATABASE_URL is injected). Connection limits apply; use pooling. Redis and other engines are not hosted — connect externally, or use the /data volume for SQLite/files. Migrations are not run automatically unless you upload a dump through the deploy flow.
Is Docker Compose supported?＋
Full multi-service Compose orchestration is not supported yet. Bring-your-own Dockerfile mode deploys one web container that passes HTTP health checks.
Does PocketBay charge today?＋
We are in beta: six plans exercise the full subscription flow with no real charges; Cloud and AI Credits are consumed by actual usage.
How is PocketBay different from Vercel, Railway, or Render?＋
PocketBay is built around AI agent pairing deploy, machine-readable protocol, and failure self-heal feedback; mature platforms offer more complete preview envs, managed data services, multi-region, and enterprise features.
Why trust PocketBay?＋
The platform isolates build resources, container networking, Linux capabilities, process counts, and sensitive env vars, with a public legal entity, terms, privacy policy, and support email.