# Production-grade, without an ops hire.

> Managed hosting for founders. CustomLabs builds or finishes version one, dedicated compute runs it at a flat rate, and CodeHerder ships small changes.

Source: https://customhosted.com/for/founders/

№ 01 Who it's for

CustomLabs can build or finish the first version, dedicated compute and a managed database keep it running at a flat rate, and CodeHerder's agents ship the small stuff while you're busy talking to customers.

№ 02 Sound familiar?

## Sound familiar?

A founder or two-person team with something built fast, heading toward real users or a demo.

- It runs fine on your laptop and the preview URL, and you have no idea what happens under real traffic.
- You're the one who gets paged if the database falls over, and databases were never really your job.
- There's a growing list of small fixes and nobody on the team has a spare evening to touch the code.
- A demo or a launch date is fixed, and "it'll probably hold up" isn't a plan.

Not you? Already staffing a platform engineer, or managing sites on behalf of other people? [Agencies](https://customhosted.com/for/agencies) · [No dev team](https://customhosted.com/for/no-dev-team) or try the [selector](https://customhosted.com/selector).

№ 03 The difference

## The week this replaces

Same situation, dimension by dimension — what it looks like now, and what changes.

| Dimension | Now | With CustomHosted |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Going live | A preview URL, a custom domain half-wired, and a bit of hope. | TLS, DNS, and a real domain, live the same week. |
| The database | A single instance you quietly hope never runs out of disk. | A managed Postgres tier, backed up nightly with point-in-time recovery. |
| An outage at 2am | You, your phone, and a search engine. | Monitoring catches it first; a human answers when it needs a decision. |
| The next small feature | Whoever on the team has a free evening this week. | Brief it in plain language — an agent opens a pull request, it ships after review. |
| Demo day traffic | Cross your fingers it holds. | Dedicated compute sized to the workload, sized up any time it needs to be. |

№ 04 The loop

## The loop, in your shape

For a founder, the loop usually starts mid-build rather than at zero — the goal is turning something that already runs on a laptop into something that survives real users, without hiring for it.

1. 01 — Build — CustomLabs — CustomLabs builds the first version, or hardens the one you already shipped fast, so "it works on my machine" becomes something real users can hit.
2. 02 — Iterate — CodeHerder — CodeHerder ships the steady stream of small stuff — a webhook, a usage cap, a copy fix — while the two of you stay focused on customers, not pull requests.
3. 03 — Run — CustomHosted — Dedicated compute sized to the workload plus a managed database, backed up nightly and patched on a schedule, with a human who answers if it falls over.

An example brief

- **The brief**: A payment-provider webhook handler and a usage cap, needed ahead of the next demo.
- **What the pull request holds**: The handler, written against the real, running repo and opened as a pull request from the brief above.
- **What happens next**: [A human reviews and merges](https://customhosted.com/review). [It ships through the same pipeline](https://customhosted.com/deploys).
- **A real one**: [The site is blinding at night](https://customhosted.com/case-files#cf-01) (+751 −258 · 19 files · merged 2026-07-31).

№ 05 The second hire

## The second hire, without the second hire

A two-person team's next hire is usually "ops," and it's usually the wrong first move.

Somewhere between a working prototype and a first real customer, a founder starts thinking about hiring someone to own "infrastructure" — the backups, the patching, the on-call, the small fixes that pile up while everyone else is selling. It's a real need and a genuinely bad first hire: expensive, hard to keep busy at two-person scale, and exactly the kind of role that sits idle until the one week it matters most.

The loop is built to be that hire instead, at a fraction of the cost and with no seat to fill. CustomHosted runs the operational layer — TLS, DNS, [backups](https://customhosted.com/glossary#backup), monitoring, patching — the same way it would for a staffed platform team. CodeHerder picks up the steady trickle of small changes a real app always needs: a webhook, a usage cap, a copy fix, each one a plain-language [brief](https://customhosted.com/glossary#brief) that becomes a reviewed [pull request](https://customhosted.com/glossary#pull-request) instead of a ticket nobody has time for.

What's left for the founders is the part only they can do: deciding what to build next, and selling it. If the app itself still needs real architecture — proper authentication, a data model that scales — that's a job for [CustomLabs](https://customlabs.io), not a brief; see the [from prototype to production](https://customhosted.com/guides/from-prototype-to-production) guide for where that line sits.

№ 06 A starting configuration

## A starting configuration

A first production app: dedicated compute, a managed database, and the iteration add-on.

- **Base plan**: Dedicated M
- **Iteration — CodeHerder loop**: +$25/mo
- **Managed database**: DB Standard — +$25/mo
- **Starting point**: I've built it, it isn't live yet
- **What it is**: An app or API that runs code server-side
- **Needs a database**: Yes
- **Recommended fit**: Dedicated compute + managed database
- **Estimated total**: $109/mo

[Get this quoted →](https://customhosted.com/contact?plan=DD-M&addons=AD-CH&db=DB-STANDARD&stage=have-code&type=app&data=needs-db&fit=dedicated-db&src=founders) [Size it differently on the estimator →](https://customhosted.com/#estimate)

№ 07 FAQ

## Founders questions

The questions this situation raises on its own. General hosting questions live on the homepage.

1. 01 We haven't finished the build — can you still help? Yes. CustomLabs can design and build the first version, or finish one that's already underway, and it lands on this hosting from day one.
2. 02 What happens if we outgrow Dedicated M? Move up a tier when you need to — more compute, more storage — with no rebuild and no migration required.
3. 03 Do we have to have used CustomLabs to get on the loop? No. The loop works on any codebase already hosted with us — bring your own repo, or start with a CustomLabs build.
4. 04 What can't be briefed as a small change? New architecture, authentication from scratch, or a data model that needs to scale — that's a rebuild, not a brief, and belongs with CustomLabs.
5. 05 Who reviews the agent's pull requests? You do, by default — or CustomLabs, acting as caretaker, if you'd rather review nothing yourselves yet.

№ 08 See also

## Keep exploring

- [Dedicated compute A fixed-price instance sized to the workload, with a static IP and full control.](https://customhosted.com/dedicated)
- [Databases Managed Postgres, backed up nightly alongside the rest of the stack.](https://customhosted.com/databases)
- [From prototype to production What it takes to turn a fast-built app into something real users can hit.](https://customhosted.com/guides/from-prototype-to-production)
- [Scaling What "move up a tier" above actually means: the ladder, the move minute by minute, and no rebuild required.](https://customhosted.com/scaling)
- [Under load The rehearsal that answers "you have no idea what happens under real traffic" before a fixed launch date does.](https://customhosted.com/under-load)

## Ready to start?

Tell us what you're running — one fixed monthly rate, within a business day.

[Get a quote →](https://customhosted.com/contact)