Services - A senior engineer to set up and run your VPS.
Managed platforms are bleeding you for what's basically a Linux box. But a raw VPS means SSH, Nginx, certs, firewalls, and backups. That's the ops work nobody on your team wants to own. We set it up right and keep it running.
What's included
- Provision and harden a fresh VPS on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or wherever you like. Non-root user, SSH keys only, locked-down UFW firewall, fail2ban, and automatic security updates.
- Set up Nginx as a reverse proxy in front of your app, with HTTP/2, gzip, sane timeouts, and clean per-app server blocks.
- Wire up SSL with Let's Encrypt and certbot, including auto-renewal that actually fires so your cert never silently expires at 2am.
- Dockerize your app and run it with docker compose on the box. Env handling, restart policies, log rotation, and a zero-downtime deploy that doesn't drop requests.
- Write a real deploy script or GitHub Actions pipeline so shipping is one push, not an SSH session and a prayer.
- Migrate you off Heroku, Render, or a managed DB onto a self-managed box. Move the app and Postgres, set up automated backups to S3, and prove the restore works.
Why on a subscription
The work clusters at the front. Provisioning, hardening, and the migration eat the first week, then the box mostly runs itself until you add a service or need a tweak. A flat monthly you can pause gives you ops on demand without paying a DevOps salary to babysit a server that's quiet most of the time.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I get root access and full control of the server?
- It's your box, your cloud account, your root. We set it up, document what we changed, and hand you the keys. Everything's standard Nginx, Docker, and shell scripts. No proprietary wrapper, nothing you can't read or take over yourself later.
- Will moving off my managed host break things or cause downtime?
- We stage the new box, mirror your app and database, and test it before cutover. The DNS flip is the last step, done at a low-traffic window, with the old host still live as a fallback until the new one's proven. We don't tear down anything until you're happy.
- What happens if the server goes down at 3am?
- We're code-only and async, so we're not a 24/7 pager. But we build it to not need one. Auto-restart on crash, health checks, backups, and monitoring so it self-heals or alerts you early. When something does need a fix, drop it at the top of your queue and it's the active task, usually turned around in 48 to 72 hours.
Got a task? Let's ship it.
3 spots open. Subscribe today, drop your first task, and most tasks ship in 48 to 72 hours. No call required.