Introduction
What Tanzahost is, what you can run on it, and how it's organised - projects, apps, sites, databases and domains, paid for by what they really use.
Updated 17 Oct 20263 min read
Tanzahost runs your websites and apps for you. You send your code from GitHub or a ZIP file, and we work out how to build it, put it online with SSL, and keep it running. You pay from a prepaid wallet, every hour, for the memory and processor time your apps really use: there are no plans or sizes to choose.
What you can run
| Kind | Examples | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Apps built from your code | Laravel, Symfony, Next.js, Nuxt, Express, Django, FastAPI, Flask | Laravel, Node.js, Python, PHP |
| Sites that keep their files | WordPress, installed for you, classic PHP sites, a cPanel backup's public_html | WordPress, PHP |
| Static sites | Plain HTML, or React, Vue and Svelte apps built with Vite | Static sites |
| Databases | MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Valkey | Databases |
We also detect and build Go, Ruby (Rails and other Rack apps), Java (Maven and Gradle) and Rust.
How it's organised
Your account is your business. It has one wallet, and your projects.
A project holds everything for one website or business: its apps, databases and domain, in one location you choose, like UK-01 · United Kingdom. Projects are free. See Projects and locations.
An app is your code, running. It gets a free address with SSL, like
duka-7h3k.tanzahost.co, and your own domain when you add one.A database runs next to your apps, reachable only by the apps in its project.
What happens when you deploy
You push to GitHub, or upload a ZIP file.
We read your code, see what it is ("Laravel on PHP 8.4"), install its packages and build it. You watch every line of the build as it happens.
The new version starts beside the old one. Once it answers its health check, visitors switch to it in one step, with no downtime.
We watch it from then on. If it stops within 5 minutes, visitors go back to the version before by themselves.
See Deploying and rolling back.
What's included with every app
Variables, stored encrypted, for your settings and secrets.
Workers and scheduled tasks, for queues and jobs on a timetable.
Logs of everything it prints and every visit, kept 7 days, and its live numbers.
A terminal in the browser, and a file manager.
Protection at the door: limits on every visitor, a web firewall and a cache for static files.
Staging and previews of pull requests, when you want them.
Your own sandbox: each app runs walled off from every other customer's.
How you pay
You top up your wallet by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, through Stripe, in US dollars, or save a card that pays once a month. Every hour, what your apps and databases used is counted. Before you add anything, the dashboard shows the rates and an estimate for the month. See How billing works.
Example: Asha's shop
Asha sells handmade goods online. Her shop, duka, is a Laravel app in a project of the same name, in UK-01 · United Kingdom. It has a MySQL database, a worker for its order emails, the scheduler as a scheduled task, and her domain, duka.co.tz. She deploys by pushing to GitHub, and pays for what the shop uses, hour by hour. You'll meet her all through these docs.
Next
Start with Your first deploy: from an empty account to an app online in a few minutes.