Choosing a host

What you'll learn

Which kind of host fits your site, what every host needs from you, and a checklist before going live.

Before this page: Migrations & deployment.

Easy CMS runs wherever Node.js 22.12 or newer runs a server. It needs two things a host may or may not give you: a place for the database and a place for uploaded files. Edge runtimes (Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions) are not supported.

Which host

	Database	Uploads	Scheduled jobs	Good for
Vercel	Hosted Postgres (Neon) or Turso	Vercel Blob or S3	A cron calling jobs/run	Next.js sites, preview deployments
Netlify	Netlify Database or hosted Postgres	Netlify Blobs or S3	A scheduled function calling jobs/run	Next.js sites on Netlify
Docker	Postgres in a container, or SQLite on a volume	A volume, or S3	Run by the server every minute	Any server or platform that runs containers
VPS	SQLite on the disk, or Postgres	The disk	Run by the server every minute	One server you control, the lowest cost
Other hosts	Depends on the host	Depends on the host	Depends on the host	Railway, Render, Fly.io, Coolify…

Two kinds of host behave differently:

• Serverless (Vercel, Netlify): no disk that survives and no process that keeps running. Use a hosted database and file storage, and call the jobs endpoint from a cron.
• Long-running (Docker, a VPS, most platforms): one server that keeps running. SQLite and uploads can stay on a persistent disk, and the server runs scheduled jobs every minute by itself.

What every host needs

EASY_CMS_SECRET	At least 32 random characters (openssl rand -hex 32). Without it the API answers 500.
NODE_ENV=production	Production refuses to start while migrations are pending, and never changes the schema by itself.
Migrations	Created with easy-cms migrate:create, committed, and applied with easy-cms migrate before the new version starts. See Migrations & deployment.
EASY_CMS_SETUP_CODE	Until the first admin exists, so nobody else can claim a fresh site.
serverURL	The public address, for absolute media URLs and email links. See Health checks.
Trust the proxy	Behind a proxy or platform you trust: trustProxy (Next.js, Nuxt) or --trust-proxy (standalone), so login limits see each visitor's IP and the CSRF origin check accepts X-Forwarded-Host. Vercel and Netlify are recognized automatically.
Scheduled jobs	On serverless, a cron calling <api>/jobs/run with CRON_SECRET. They publish scheduled posts, retry webhooks, send queued emails and run backups.

Before going live

• [ ] The secret, setup code and database URL are set in the host's environment, not committed
• [ ] easy-cms migrate runs before each new version starts
• [ ] Uploads go to a persistent disk or to file storage (Uploads & media)
• [ ] Scheduled jobs run: every minute on a long-running server, or from a cron
• [ ] email is configured, so password resets and invitations work (Email)
• [ ] The site is on HTTPS, with serverURL set to its address
• [ ] Backups run, and you have tried a restore
• [ ] The security checklist is done

Next steps

• One-click deploy: a starter site on Vercel or Netlify in a few clicks.
• Vercel, Netlify, Docker or a VPS: step by step.