Projects and locations
A project holds one website or business - its apps, databases and domain - in one location. How to choose a location, and what a project keeps private.
Updated 17 Oct 20263 min read
A project holds everything for one website or business: its apps, its databases and its domain, all in one location. Asha's project duka holds her Laravel shop, its MySQL database and its Valkey queue, in UK-01 · United Kingdom, under her domain duka.co.tz.
Make a project
Choose New project, type a name, pick a location, and choose Create project. You add a domain later, on the project's Domains tab. Projects are free: you pay only for the apps and databases in them, by the hour.
Until your account's first top-up, it can have up to 2 projects and 3 apps. Your first top-up raises that, and the limits lift step by step as you pay more, until there are none.
One location per project
Every app and database of a project runs in the project's location, close together, so a database query never crosses countries. Pick the location closest to most of your visitors. The list of open locations is on Locations, and the new-project page shows which one is closest to you.
A project stays in its location. If you ever need to move one, our team moves it for you.
Locations are named by a short code and their country, like UK-01 · United Kingdom. We open new ones as we add room around the world.
A private network for each project
The apps and databases of one project can reach each other; nothing else can.
Your databases are private: reachable only from the apps of their own project, never from another project. Asha's database is at
mysql.duka.internal, a name that works only inside duka. See Connect an app to a database. An own database can also take encrypted connections from your own computer, but only once you switch that on: see Connect from your own computer.Your apps are reached from the internet only through their addresses, with SSL, after our web firewall and limits.
One main domain
A project has one main domain, like duka.co.tz, with any of its subdomains (shop.duka.co.tz, www.duka.co.tz), and extra domains that point to it, like duka.com. A domain belongs to one project only. Add them on the project's Domains tab. See Add a domain.
Every app also gets a free address, like duka-7h3k.tanzahost.co, before any domain is added.
What's in a project
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Overview | The project's apps, sites and databases, with their state now, its cost this month and its activity |
| Deployments | Every deployment of its apps, newest first, to look at or roll back |
| Domains | Its main domain, extra domains and the free addresses |
| DNS | Its domain's records, when it uses our nameservers |
| Variables | Each app's settings and secrets |
| Logs | What its apps print and every visit, live |
| Settings | Its name, where it runs, sending logs elsewhere, and deleting it |
Staging and other environments
A project's staging is a copy of it, linked to it, in the same location, with its own apps, databases, variables and address. See Environments and previews.
One project or two?
| Use one project when | Use separate projects when |
|---|---|
| The apps are one business: a shop, its API, its blog | They're different businesses or clients |
| They share a database or a domain | They need different locations |
| You want each one's cost apart |
Delete a project
On the project's Settings, choose Delete project and type its name to confirm. Its apps stop at once. Everything in it is kept for 7 days, in case you change your mind, and then deleted for good: its apps, their files and its addresses. Choose Keep the project within those 7 days to bring it back.