Quickstart

This walks through connecting your first server and putting a site on it. It takes about ten minutes, most of which is waiting for the agent to install.

Before you start#

You need:

A server running Ubuntu or Debian that you can reach over SSH.
Root or sudo on that server.
A CloudPilot account — see Creating your account.

If the words organisation, project and release are not yet doing much work for you, read Core concepts first. It is short, and the rest of the docs assume it.

1. Connect the server#

In the panel, go to Servers → Add server. You have two options; either ends with the same agent running on the machine.

Auto install (SSH) is the quicker one. Give CloudPilot the server's IP, an SSH user, and either a password or a private key. It logs in once, installs the agent, and disconnects.

Manual gives you a command to paste into your own SSH session instead:

curl -sL https://cloudpilot.in/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- YOUR_TOKEN

Use manual if your SSH access needs a jump host, an MFA prompt, or anything else CloudPilot cannot drive on its own.

Either way, the server appears in the list and turns online once the agent checks in — usually within a minute.

Credentials are not stored

CloudPilot uses the SSH credentials for that one install and does not keep them. Full detail in Connecting a server.

2. Create a project#

Go to Projects → New project. Pick the server you just connected and the runtime that matches what you are deploying:

Runtime	Use it for
`static`	Plain HTML/CSS/JS, or the build output of React, Vue, Svelte, Astro
`node_pm2`	A Node app kept alive by PM2
`express`	An Express app
`laravel`	A PHP/Laravel app
`docker`	Anything you ship as a container

If you are unsure and you have a dist/ or build/ folder, you want static.

3. Deploy#

Hit Deploy. CloudPilot copies the release onto the server, puts it in a new release directory, and points the live path at it.

The previous release stays on disk. That is what makes rollback a click rather than a rebuild.

4. Point a domain at it#

Before this step, create a DNS A record for your domain pointing at the server's IP, at your DNS provider. CloudPilot cannot do this part — it does not control your domain.

Then, on the server's Domains tab, add the domain and choose the project. Once DNS has propagated, issue an SSL certificate from the same screen.

DNS first, certificate second

A certificate cannot be issued for a domain that does not yet resolve to this server. If the issue fails, check the A record before retrying — see Troubleshooting.

5. Decide who else gets in#

If anyone else will touch this, go to Team and invite them with a role rather than sharing your login. Developer can deploy but cannot delete servers; Viewer can only look. See Roles and permissions.

What to do next#

Turn on uptime checks and alerts so you hear about an outage before your users tell you.
Mark anything customer-facing as protected, so deploys and deletions need a second pair of eyes.
Set up off-site backups — a backup on the same server is not a backup.

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