Fly.io + Neon

The zero-ops option: CrashCart runs on Fly.io and scales to zero when idle; the database is a free Neon Postgres. For a small app this costs nothing or close to it. Every step below has been run as written.

Storage: Go edition, plain Postgres

Neon ships TimescaleDB without compression, so CrashCart runs in plain mode: full-size rows, batched retention — fine to a few million events a month. Neon's free plan holds 0.5 GB. See three ways your data is stored.

You need

• The flyctl CLI, logged in (curl -L https://fly.io/install.sh | sh, then fly auth signup or fly auth login)
• A Neon account

1. Create the database on Neon

In the Neon console, New project. Pick a region — remember which; you'll put the Fly app next to it. On the project page, copy the connection string (the direct one, not pooled):

postgresql://…@ep-….aws.neon.tech/neondb?sslmode=require

2. Create the Fly app

The repository ships a fly.toml (GHCR image, scale-to-zero, health check). Clone it and launch with a name of your own:

git clone https://github.com/crashcartapp/crashcart
cd crashcart
fly launch --copy-config --no-deploy --name my-crashcart --region iad

Use a Fly region close to your Neon region (iad for AWS us-east, sjc for us-west, fra for eu-central, sin for ap-southeast, …; fly platform regions lists them). The app name must be unique on Fly; it becomes https://my-crashcart.fly.dev.

3. Set the secrets

fly secrets set \
  DATABASE_URL='postgresql://…neon.tech/neondb?sslmode=require' \
  API_KEYS="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  VIEWER_PASSWORD="$(openssl rand -hex 16)" \
  PUBLIC_URL=https://my-crashcart.fly.dev

Note the values you generated — fly secrets list shows only digests.

4. Deploy

fly deploy --ha=false

--ha=false keeps it to one machine, which is all a small install needs. Then:

curl https://my-crashcart.fly.dev/health
# {"status":"ok"}

The first request after idle takes a second or two while the machine starts.

5. Create a project

fly ssh console -C "/crashcart project shop-ios 'Shop app (iOS)' ios"
# project shop-ios (id 1)
# DSN: https://<key>@my-crashcart.fly.dev/1

Open https://my-crashcart.fly.dev (any username, your VIEWER_PASSWORD), paste the DSN into the SDK — Connect an SDK — and go through Before going live once.

Custom domain

fly certs add crashcart.example.com

Add the DNS records it prints, then fly secrets set PUBLIC_URL=https://crashcart.example.com.

Upgrading

fly deploy --ha=false

pulls the newest release (fly.toml points at :latest). To pin a version, set image = "ghcr.io/crashcartapp/crashcart:0.1.1" in fly.toml.

Scale to zero and housekeeping

fly.toml stops the machine when idle and starts it on the next request. Retention and crash-spike checks run in the background while it is awake — fine for most apps. If you need them on an exact schedule, set min_machines_running = 1 in fly.toml to keep it running.

If something doesn't work

Symptom	Check
fly deploy times out on health checks	fly logs — almost always a wrong DATABASE_URL. Fix with fly secrets set (it redeploys)
functionality not supported under the current "apache" license in the logs	Upgrade to CrashCart 0.1.1 or later, which detects Neon's TimescaleDB build and uses plain Postgres
The DSN says http://localhost:8080	PUBLIC_URL isn't set
fly ssh console fails	The machine is stopped; hit /health once first