Strapi Cloud is now available

What you need to know:

• Strapi Cloud is officially out of private beta and publicly available to all invited Strapi users.

• We're capping the number of daily trials to ensure the stability and scalability of the platform for our customers.

• Strapi Cloud provides more value than just hosting, it also includes out of the box features and capabilities such as easy deployment, database storage, email provider, global CDN, real-time logs, email / in-app notifications and advanced CMS features.

• For now, we're only introducing two paid plans: Pro ($99/month) and Team ($499/month) that are available for purchase directly from our pricing page or after a 7-day trial.

• Our Hobby (free) and Enterprise tiers will come later together with certification and other compliance requirements.

Strapi Cloud is a managed content platform built on top of Strapi, the leading open-source headless CMS. Strapi Cloud enables cross-functional teams to increase their content velocity without having to compromise on their customization needs and requirements.

Developers can rely on Strapi Cloud to abstract away the complexity of infrastructure management while keeping their development workflow and extending the core capabilities of Strapi. Content managers use Strapi Cloud to autonomously manage all types of content and benefit from a unique set of collaboration, security, and compliance features.

As part of our private beta program announced back in October, 2022, a few hundreds of users have already been onboarded on Strapi Cloud. We're extremely grateful for all the feedback and encouragements we've received over the last few months and would like to give a special shoutout to a few individuals who took the time for interview and shared extensive feedback in surveys and on Discord namely: Saad Muhammad Mujeeb, Jelmer Visser, Paulo Sà, Yuri Ceschin, Wilhelm Iohan Hetmann, Kenny Maurer, Michiel Vandewalle, Edgar Vonk and Thomas Poirier.

The feedback we have received from our beta users has been very positive and we are grateful for the trust and support of several innovative companies such as Meilisearch, Prototypr, Plenti which are already working on migrating to Strapi Cloud.

With more than 900 upvotes on our public roadmap and more than 9000 people on the waitlist, Strapi Cloud is by far the most requested "feature" so we are very excited to open the door to the broader Strapi community starting today.

To ensure the stability and scalability of the platform for our customers as we start ramping up the number of users and projects, we are capping the number of daily trials to 50 on top of all the invitations that are being sent to the people already on the waitlist.

Batteries included but customizable

As of today, Strapi is the only vendor on the market that offers both a self-hosted and cloud version of the same CMS while keeping all the customization capabilities. Unlike proprietary and opinionated no-code website builders or SaaS Headless CMS that lock you into using their platform, our goal with Strapi Cloud is to provide the same ease of use and turnkey experience without sacrificing the flexibility and customization capabilities that open source provides to developers. In other words, it means that you have the freedom to use an external database, another CDN or email provider as you see fit, with no vendor lock in.

We believe that this hybrid approach is the best way for our users to ship faster while future-proofing their applications with a platform that scales across a long tail of use cases, services or devices.

From our research and early feedback, Strapi Cloud is a very good fit for developers and marketers from small to medium size businesses and digital agencies who need a customizable content management system (CMS) with out of the box capabilities and configuration so that they can focus on what really matters: building the best websites, mobile apps or internal tools for them or their customers.

If you don’t have the knowledge or time to manage servers, databases, or CDN in-house but need a CMS and managed platform with composable architectures that can evolve over time to meet the needs of various stakeholders (developers, designers, content managers, etc), then Strapi Cloud might be a good solution for you.

What is available today?

Strapi Cloud Pro and Team are the two plans available today. These include a server, a database, a CDN, an email service, and generous asset storage and bandwidth limits, giving customers the ability to manage their content and applications securely and scale resources vertically as needed. The Team plan also includes an Audit Log feature for the Content Management System and support services to meet the requirements of larger organizations. Lets have a closer look at the key capabilities available today.

In the future, the Cloud plans will enable more paid features in the CMS. However, the Cloud and the CMS will stay completely independent from each other, as we said: no lock-in.

Database & Data Transfer

Every Strapi app hosted on Cloud is automatically connected to PostgreSQL database. Any Strapi project running on Strapi v4.7 or higher can easily transfer data over to the PostgreSQL database included in Strapi Cloud subscriptions. Thanks to the newly introduced Data Transfer feature, you can transfer all your content and assets from your original instance to Strapi Cloud (or another hosting provider) using one command. No need to act manually on a database!

One of the key principles of Strapi Cloud is to prevent lock-in and give developers the freedom and flexibility to connect Strapi and Strapi Cloud to their preferred services. The database is no exception, you can connect an external one if that's better for you. If no Strapi project database configuration is detected, Strapi Cloud sets that up for you so you don't have to worry about it.

Email provider

All apps deployed on Strapi Cloud have an email provider setup by default to trigger email in response to a user action or consume data from the Content Manager to streamline the creation of programmatic emails. Please refer to the Email plugin documentation to learn more about email configuration. However, you're still able to set a custom one, using the environment variables.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A fast, scalable and reliable CDN is provided to host and cache your assets (images, videos, files) and make them accessible on the Internet. Included by default in all our tiers, it gives you the power to reduce page load times, improve the performance and SEO whatever the kind of projects you develop. Again, you're still able to set a custom CDN by using the environment variables.

Real-time logs

Each deployment now has a dedicated Logs details view. While deployment is in progress, you can check how it’s going in real-time inside the Build and Deploy log tabs. Once a deployment is done, you can access the runtime logs, where what happens with your app is also reflected in real-time.

If, for example, a certain step of your deployment fails, you can copy the whole logs with one click (and later share with our Support team). This also implies a smoother UX for project creation – once you create a new project, you’re redirected to the first deploy’s log with the Build tab pre-opened.

What is coming next?

While we’re proud of this first public release, this is just the beginning for Strapi Cloud and the best is yet to come! We know that many of you were either hoping for a free tier to host personal project or on the other hand, an enterprise tiers with really high uptime, compliance and security features. Adding new plans that meet the needs of both individual developers and enterprises alike is definitely on the agenda. While we’re not able to communicate on a specific release date for now, here is more insights into the features that are on our short term roadmap.

In app notifications

In addition to the account homepage which includes essential information about your projects, database, asset storage and bandwidth usage, Strapi Cloud includes a Notification Center providing actionable insights into your project operations. At the moment, there are operational notifications, mostly informing on the deploys’ status, and project-level notifications if your GitHub repository gets disconnected for instance.

Select a region

At the moment, all the apps (dashboard, data assets) are currently hosted in the New York region. However, Strapi Cloud users will soon have the option to select other regions (Europe, Asia & Australia) where they’d like their data and assets to be stored.

Custom domains

By default, all the projects deployed on Strapi Cloud comes with a pre-generated names which sometimes isn’t convenient for business operation purposes. The ability to use custom domains for your hosted apps has been requested a lot during the Beta program. We’ve heard your feedback and we will soon release that option in the user interface.

Automatic backups

Later this year, we will add an automatic backup functionality that will back up all your project data, assets and settings in a safe and encrypted way. These backups will be done on a various regular basis (weekly, daily or hourly) according to your tiers. More details will come in the next months.

Compliance, Trust & SLAs

We are dedicated to co-building the future of Strapi Cloud with you. All our team members have all their hands on deck (laptops really!) to fix every bug or security issue that could be found. Our absolute priority is the security of your data and the uptime of your projects. In the meantime, we are also working on becoming GDPR compliant and joining the Privacy Shield program. SOC2 certification and higher SLAs will come in a second iteration.

Strapi Community Call

Join the Strapi Cloud Community Call on Thursday, March 2nd to learn more about Strapi Cloud and ask your questions live.

Getting Started:

Before you can deploy your Strapi application on Strapi Cloud, you need to have the following prerequisites: Strapi version 4.6.x or higher and your project source code available on GitHub. Please refer to the developer documentation for more information

• Request a free trial

• Learn more about Strapi Cloud plans

• Take a look at our Strapi Cloud FAQ

• Check out our Strapi Cloud Youtube Playlist