Overview

Launchy is a standard Next.js 16 app, so every Next-compatible host works. Two paths are first-class:

Option A — Vercel (recommended for most)

Fastest path to production. 10 minutes start to finish.

• Zero-config for Next.js
• Postgres via Neon / Supabase / Railway / your choice
• Redis via Upstash
• R2 for storage
• Vercel Crons for the weekly batch

See Vercel deployment.

Best for: solo founders, indie hackers, anyone who wants to focus on the product, not infrastructure.

Option B — Self-hosted with Coolify

Full control on your own VPS, flat predictable monthly cost.

• Coolify manages the app + Postgres + Redis on your VPS
• Auto HTTPS via Let's Encrypt
• Built-in scheduled tasks for the crons
• Optional: R2 (or any S3-compatible) for storage
• Deploy from your GitHub repo on push

See Self-hosted with Coolify.

Best for: EU data residency, zero vendor lock-in, cost predictability.

What must exist before deploy

Regardless of host:

1. A domain pointing to your app (or ready to be pointed)
2. A Postgres database (Neon free tier or self-hosted)
3. A Redis instance (Upstash free tier or self-hosted)
4. Environment variables set (see Environment Variables)
5. Cron trigger configured (see Cron Jobs)

Optional:

• Stripe account (for paid tiers/sponsors)
• Plunk account (for emails)
• R2 bucket (for prod uploads)

Pre-deploy checklist

Before you click "Deploy":

• Final domain decided and DNS ready to point
• Database provisioned (Neon, Supabase, Coolify Postgres, or self-hosted)
• Redis provisioned (Upstash, Coolify Redis, or self-hosted)
• Cloudflare R2 bucket created + public access enabled + custom domain connected
• BETTER_AUTH_SECRET generated (openssl rand -base64 32)
• CRON_SECRET generated (openssl rand -base64 32)
• If using payments: Stripe account in test mode, secret key copied
• If using OAuth: Google/GitHub OAuth apps created with prod callback URLs

Post-deploy checklist

After your first successful deploy, run through this in order:

1. Visit the homepage → loads without errors
2. Sign up with your email → verification email arrives (or link in server logs if Plunk isn't set)
3. Promote yourself to admin by running the helper script against your prod database (from a shell with access):

   DATABASE_URL="postgresql://...prod..." bun run promote-admin [email protected]

   On Vercel, open a local shell with the prod DATABASE_URL copied from Vercel env. On Coolify, run from the app container's Terminal tab: bun run promote-admin [email protected] (the env vars are already set). Then sign out + sign in to see the /admin link.
4. Go to /admin/settings → set site_name, site_tagline, contact_email
5. Replace public/logo.webp + public/logo-dark.webp with your logos → redeploy
6. Trigger the weekly cron manually and check the response:

   curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRON_SECRET" \
     https://your-domain.com/api/cron/weekly-batch

7. Submit a test product via /submit, accept it from /admin/submissions, verify it appears on the homepage
8. (If using Stripe) make a test purchase with card 4242 4242 4242 4242 — verify the webhook fires and the submission flips to accepted
9. Point your real DNS at the deploy — verify HTTPS works
10. Switch Stripe from test to live mode (new webhook secret!)
11. Announce your launch

Observability

Minimum production observability:

• Vercel/server logs — for runtime errors
• Plausible — traffic, events (votes, signups)
• Stripe Dashboard — payments
• Discord alerts — for cron failures and submission activity

Optional:

• Sentry — structured error tracking
• OpenTelemetry — if you self-host and want traces

Launchy doesn't ship Sentry by default — add it if needed in ~10 lines.