Every site on Webstead lives in its own asset canister — a smart-contract-backed container on the Internet Computer. Canisters pay for their own storage and compute using cycles, the network's on-chain resource currency. No cycles left, and the network freezes the canister until it's refilled. This replaces the usual "server bill" with an on-chain balance instead.
A cycle count on its own doesn't tell you much unless you know your site's burn rate. So instead, your dashboard shows runway: an estimate of how many days of normal operation are left at the current rate. You'll see one of three states:
Freezing is recoverable, not data loss — a top-up brings the site straight back. The one genuinely irreversible action is deleting a site, which burns whatever cycles remain rather than refunding them.
Webstead funds cycles on your behalf while the beta is free. Two limits govern how much we'll add automatically:
When either limit is reached, automatic top-ups pause until the next month or until you raise the relevant budget. This is a funding pause only — it never pauses deploys, and your site keeps serving whatever runway it has left. If your site was already funded when the budget was reached, nothing changes until it actually needs another top-up.
If runway hits zero before a top-up lands, the canister freezes: it stops serving requests until it receives more cycles. As soon as a top-up completes — whether automatic or triggered manually from your dashboard — the site resumes immediately with everything intact. Nothing about your deployed content or configuration is lost while frozen.
Once billing ships, paid plans will include a larger monthly cycles allowance so you don't need to think about this day to day; free tiers will keep a modest budget similar to today's beta default. We'll publish exact numbers before turning on billing — see Pricing for the latest.
You can always add cycles to a site directly from its Hosting tab, independent of the automatic monthly budget — useful if you know a traffic spike is coming or just want extra headroom.