Frequently asked questions

A managed home for open-source apps. You pick an app from the catalog, we run it for you on servers in your region. Provisioning, HTTPS, updates, daily backups, monitoring and support are all our job. It is the practical middle ground between paying for SaaS forever and babysitting your own VPS.

Small businesses, prosumers, and the agencies that serve them: people who want to own their tools without owning the 2am maintenance. If you have ever thought "I could self-host that" and then not done it, this is for you.

Minutes. Pick the app, pick a region and size, and the platform provisions your instance on its own HTTPS address automatically. Your $5 starting credit covers it; no card needed up front.

Not yet. The curated catalog is deliberate: every listed app is tested, updateable and restorable on our platform, which is what lets us support it properly. We add apps that are web-based, serve a single HTTPS port, ship an official Docker image, are actively maintained, and whose licence permits hosted use. We also skip apps whose authors ask hosts not to compete with their own paid service. Requests are welcome via support.

Every app is backed up automatically every night, including its database. Backups are encrypted and incremental, so each night only what changed is sent, and they are stored in the EU. You keep restore points for the last 14 days plus four weekly ones. Backups are included in every tier, not sold as an add-on.

Most apps are backed up while they keep running. Apps that run their own database, such as BookOrbit, RomM, WordPress and BookStack, pause for a few seconds to a minute, once a night, so the copy is consistent. While a backup runs, the Backups card on your app page shows a progress bar and the time left.

Yourself, from your app page. Open the Backups card, pick a restore point and press Restore. We save your current files as a restore point first, so a restore can be undone, then restore and restart the app. It usually starts within a couple of minutes. Small apps are back in well under a minute once it starts, and very large ones take longer. No support email, no per-restore fee.

Yes. On top of the daily backups we include, you can send backups to your own S3-compatible storage: AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi and others. They are encrypted and incremental (using restic), run on a schedule or when you press Back up now, and restore in one click. A recovery kit lets you restore them yourself.

Yes. SFTP and the panel file manager let you pull your app data whenever you like, and most catalog apps also have their own export functions. Belt and braces are encouraged.

Yes. Point a CNAME at your instance address, prove you control the domain with a small TXT record, and we issue and renew the TLS certificate automatically. Both steps are shown with copy-paste values in the panel.

Yes. Proxied (orange-cloud) domains work. Two footnotes: if your DNS uses CAA records, make sure letsencrypt.org is allowed to issue certificates, and use Cloudflare's "Full" TLS mode rather than "Flexible".

Yes. Each app has a Firewall tab with an IP allowlist. It is off by default. Press Add my IP to allow your current address, or use the Allow Cloudflare and Cloudflare only modes if the app sits behind Cloudflare. The allowlist covers the app's address, your custom domain and its direct port.

A CNAME alone proves where traffic goes, not who controls the name. That gap is how domain-takeover tricks work. The TXT check takes one minute and protects your domain and everyone else on the platform.

Yes. Every instance has SFTP access with per-app credentials plus a file manager in the panel, writable inside your app's data folders. Bulk-upload media, pull exports, or edit a config file when you know what you are doing.

We do. Curated updates roll out shortly after upstream releases, tested on our platform first. Stability beats being first by a day. Security fixes are fast-tracked. If a release contains breaking changes, we email you before your instance is updated, not after.

Every app can update itself. Each update is tested on a copy first, and a backup is taken before it is applied. If the updated app fails its checks, it is rolled back automatically. You can press Update now whenever you do not want to wait, and we open a notice ticket when a security update is available.

Yes, via any authenticated SMTP provider (for example Mailjet or Postmark) on port 465 or 587; every catalog app that sends mail supports this. Direct sending on port 25 is blocked platform-wide: it is the single biggest cause of hosting IP ranges getting blocklisted, and your provider-based mail is more deliverable anyway.

Yes. The panel streams your app's logs live, which turns most "why is it doing that" mysteries into a thirty-second read. Metrics for CPU, memory and disk are on the same page.

Three regions: Sydney, the US and Poland. Your app and its database stay in the region you choose, and encrypted backups for every region are stored in the EU.

Your running app, its database and its storage live in the region you chose: Sydney, the US or Poland. Backups are the exception, and we say so plainly: encrypted backups for every region are stored in the EU. If you want a copy somewhere else, you can also send your backups to a bucket you own.

Cancel any time from the panel; the app and its data are deleted and its hourly draw stops straight away, and any unused balance stays on your account. Download a backup, take an SFTP copy or export the app first if you want to keep the data, and you owe us nothing further.

Yes. Deploy the same app here, stop it, upload your old data over SFTP from the Files tab and start it again, or use the app's own import screen. It works from PikaPods, a VPS running Docker or a home server. The moving guide has the steps.

We can help. Open a ticket from your control panel, say which app you are moving and where it runs now, and support will tell you what can be moved and which files or export to send. Apps that keep their data in a database server take longer, and we will say so up front.

Yes. Switch on SFTP in your pod, stop it, download the files and, if the app uses an outside database, export it as SQL. Then upload the files to the same app on CoreHost. We never log in to your PikaPods account. The PikaPods guide has the details.

The guided move does not. You pay the normal hourly price of the app while it runs, and new accounts start with $5 of credit, no card needed.

Four flat tiers from USD $1.50 / AUD $2.30 / EUR €1.40 per month, per app, plus optional 25 GB storage blocks. Each app draws its price from your prepaid balance in your currency. The pricing page shows everything; there is no calculator because there is nothing to calculate.

By card, or with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link when your browser and device support them. You top up a prepaid balance and your apps draw from it by the hour.

Yes. Turn on auto top-up in Billing, then choose the balance that triggers it and the amount to add. When your balance falls below that, it is topped up from your saved card. You can turn it off again any time.

Yes. You earn 10% of what a friend you refer pays in their first 6 months, and they get US$5 credit on a first top-up of US$5 or more. Earnings become usable after 30 days: move them to account credit from US$25, or cash out from US$50. The details are on the Refer a friend page.

Maintainers of apps we host can opt in to receive 15% of what their app earns on CoreHost. It is opt-in only. See the For Developers page for how to take part.

Every new account gets $5 of service credit (about two months of a Lite app) with no card needed. We only ask for a card when the credit runs low. Try it properly; the risk is ours.

The platform, always, plus the apps themselves for installation, configuration and "why won't it do X" questions. Our AI engineer answers 24/7 and can safely inspect and fix your instance (with your confirmation for changes); humans escalate behind it during Australian hours. What we don't do is become your outsourced ops team inside the app. The published scope keeps support honest and included.

Yes. Service health and incident history are public at /status. We would rather you catch us being boring.