Documentation
How Servd Is Different
Servd is a little different to normal hosting platforms. We believe that you shouldn't need to be able to provision servers to get your Craft websites live.
So we've tried our best to hide all of the complexities and at the same time provide you with all of the Craft hosting best-practices without you having to configure a thing.
Because we're so different, there are a few concepts that it's important to understand before we get started...
Bundles #
Most hosting solutions are server-first. You rent a server and that becomes the focus of your workflow. Servd takes a different approach by making your application the star of the show. We do this by using the concept of bundles.
Resources #
Because we're application-first we aren't constrained by the normal rules of hosting which force you to choose a specific amount of CPU and memory up-front. Instead Servd has a pool of resources which your deployed bundles can make use of. Each of your deployed bundles has a guaranteed set of resources which change depending on the plan you've selected.
This allows you to grow your application fluidly without having to worry about scaling any servers to match. Need two instances of your application for a month? Just change your project's plan and it's all taken care of for you.
The Local Filesystem #
One of the trade-offs that we've had to make with our approach relates to how the filesystem works. Your application's filesystem is closely related to the currently deployed bundle. This means that if you update your deployed bundle the filesystem for your project resets to clean slate.
This can be a very positive thing. Imagine if a rogue plugin has trashed all of your template files; just redeploy your bundle to reset the entire filesystem.
However, it does mean we also need to take a few precautions. If control panel users can upload files and images to the local filesystem, they might disappear when a new bundle is deployed! Don't worry though - you can safely use object storage such as AWS S£ or Digital Ocean Spaces for these uploads, and Servd has its own zero-config alternative.
Just keep in mind that although your app will always have a filesystem to use, you should only use it for temporary files at run-time.