Getting Started

Create your account

Sign up at smll.io with your email address. You can use a magic link or set a password during registration.

After signing in, you'll be guided through onboarding where you set your display name and create your first workspace.

Create a workspace

A workspace is where your team collaborates. Each workspace has its own billing, members, and resources.

1. Give your workspace a name (e.g. "My Startup")
2. Invite team members if needed — you can always do this later

Create a VPC

A VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is the network boundary for your infrastructure. All resources — databases, services, storage — live inside a VPC.

1. Go to your workspace and click Create VPC
2. Choose a region (e.g. eu-central-1)
3. Your VPC is ready in seconds

Each VPC automatically gets a private container registry, S3 credentials, and resource quotas.

Deploy your first service

1. Push your Docker image to your VPC's private registry:

   docker login registry.smll.io
   docker tag myapp:latest registry.smll.io/vpc-abc12345/myapp:latest
   docker push registry.smll.io/vpc-abc12345/myapp:latest

2. Create a service in the dashboard:

   • Choose Web as the service type
   • Select your image from the registry
   • Pick an instance size (start with smll.nano)
   • Click Deploy

3. Your service gets a public URL like abc12345.eu-central-1.svc.smll.io — it's live.

Create a database

1. In your VPC, click Create Database
2. Choose PostgreSQL version (16 recommended), instance size, and storage
3. Click Create — your database is ready in ~30 seconds
4. Connection strings are automatically generated and stored as secrets

The database comes with automatic daily backups, connection pooling via PgBouncer, and a direct connection endpoint for migrations.

Add a custom domain

1. Go to your service's Settings tab
2. Under Custom Domains, click Add Domain
3. Create a CNAME record with your DNS provider pointing to the service endpoint
4. SMLL verifies DNS and provisions a TLS certificate automatically

See Custom Domains for detailed instructions.

Set up monitoring

Metrics are collected automatically — no setup needed. View CPU, memory, disk, and network charts from any service or database detail page.

To set up alerts, go to your VPC's Alerting section. 7 default alerts are already configured for common issues like OOM kills, high CPU, and disk usage.

Next steps