Honest answers about Webstead and the beta.

Managed hosting on the Internet Computer. You connect a GitHub repo, upload a folder or start from a template; Webstead builds the site, creates a canister on the network, funds it with cycles and gives you a URL. You get a dashboard where a CLI used to be, and you keep the option to take the canister with you.

A public blockchain network that runs full applications, including HTTP servers, at smart-contract level. Your files live in an asset canister, a small program with its own state and HTTP handler, replicated across a subnet of independently operated nodes. There is no origin server and no CDN in front of it.

No. The dashboard talks about sites, domains and runway. If you turn on Developer mode you'll see canister IDs and cycle balances too, and every canister ID links to the network's public dashboard so you can check things yourself.

Static and client-rendered sites: marketing pages, docs, portfolios, SPAs, and static exports from Vite, Astro, Create React App, Next.js (output: export), SvelteKit and similar. Sites that need a Node server at request time (SSR, API routes) aren't a fit. Motoko backend canisters from Caffeine or plain Motoko projects are supported.

Yes. Every account is free while Webstead is in public beta: hosting, cycles, a webstead.app address, custom domains and auto-deploys. No credit card and no trial period. Paid plans come later and the free tier stays.

We do, from a platform wallet, under a per-site monthly top-up budget. When a site reaches its budget, automatic top-ups pause until the month resets; the site keeps serving on the runway it has. You'll get one email if a site is running low, not one per check.

One site per account today, with a monthly cycle budget sized for a small to medium site. If you need more sites while we're in beta, contact us and we'll raise the limit by hand.

We'll email every account before anything changes. Accounts that don't choose a paid plan stay on the free tier and are never charged. The indicative tiers on the pricing page are our current thinking and not a commitment.

Sign in with GitHub or connect your account, pick a repo and branch, and Webstead detects the framework and proposes build settings you can edit. A webhook is registered on the repo so every push to the tracked branch redeploys. Public repos can also be imported by owner/repo without connecting anything.

Set VITE_API_URL, NEXT_PUBLIC_* or any key on the Environment tab of a site. Values are encrypted at rest and injected only for the duration of the build. They are build-time only: an asset canister has no runtime that reads env vars per request.

Open the deployment, read the tail of the log, or press Diagnose this failure to get a plain-language explanation and suggested fix. Out-of-memory, timeouts and wrong output directories are called out explicitly rather than as a bare error.

Yes. Drag a folder or ZIP of already-built static files. There's no build step, so it works for exports from any tool.

Yes, through the Internet Computer's official custom-domain support. Add your domain, copy the DNS records we generate, press Check setup, and we flip the badge to active once the records resolve and the network has registered the domain. Multiple domains per site are supported, with one marked as primary. Every site also gets a free webstead.app address.

Yes. During the beta Webstead is the controller on your canister and pays its cycles, but nothing is locked in: on request we transfer control to a principal you own (support-mediated today; one-click self-custody is on the roadmap). Your canister ID and recipe version are on your account's Export & ownership page from day one.

Fleek and Spheron also host on the Internet Computer. Webstead is opinionated about a Vercel-style workflow: connect a repo, auto-detect the framework, push-to-deploy, a custom-domain wizard, funded cycles shown as runway, and a visual editor with an AI assistant. If you'd rather hand-craft icp.yaml and manage cycles yourself, the icp CLI is right there; we package the boring parts.