The latest articles on DEV Community by Clever Deploy, (@cleverdeploy). https://dev.to/cleverdeploy https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3910965%2Fde19cc49-658a-4a25-a27a-0ddeab8d498e.png https://dev.to/cleverdeploy en Clever Deploy, Sun, 03 May 2026 22:16:39 +0000 https://dev.to/cleverdeploy/why-i-built-clever-deploy-1j46 https://dev.to/cleverdeploy/why-i-built-clever-deploy-1j46 <p>I built <strong>Clever Deploy</strong> because every time I wanted to ship a small side project, the deploy story turned into a project of its own.</p> <h2> The two problems I kept hitting </h2> <p><strong>1. Surprise bills.</strong> I'd push a side project to a "free tier"<br> platform, forget about it, and three months later get a $40 invoice<br> because something I didn't fully understand auto-scaled, or a build<br> ran 200 times, or bandwidth crossed a line I didn't know existed.<br> The pricing pages all looked simple. The actual bills never were.</p> <p><strong>2. Complexity.</strong> I've setup Jenkins in Kubernetes for clients - believe me, you don't want that kind of complexity.</p> <p>What I wanted was simplicity and no unexpected bills.</p> <h2> What Clever Deploy is </h2> <p>A deploy platform with two rules:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Click Deploy, pick a repo, get a live HTTPS URL.</strong> The defaults are right for 95% of projects, and you can override them later if you're in the 5%.</li> <li> <strong>Pricing you can predict before you click.</strong> A flat number. No metered surprises hiding behind "fair use" footnotes. If a project is going to cost you money, you know exactly how much, before it's running.</li> </ul> <p>That's the entire pitch. Everything else — the build pipeline, the<br> TLS automation, the subdomain routing, the GitHub App integration —<br> is plumbing in service of those two promises.</p> <h2> Why now </h2> <p>Hosting has gotten better and cheaper every year for a decade. The<br> <em>ergonomics</em> of hosting have not. The big platforms keep adding<br> features for the top 1% of users (edge functions, regional<br> replication, AI gateways) and quietly making the on-ramp harder for<br> everyone else.</p> <p>I wanted the deploy experience I had in 2018 with Heroku free dynos, without the 2022 ending where the free dynos got turned off and nobody had a good answer for the small-project niche.</p> <h2> Where I'm at </h2> <p>Clever Deploy works end-to-end live: GitHub auth, build pipeline, live deploys, build logs, an admin dashboard. However, it's not open to the public yet - I'm letting people in from the waitlist as I shake out edge cases.</p> <p>If predictable costs and one-click deploys sound like your kind of<br> boring, I'd love to get your feedback on it. Sign up at the waitlist at <a href="https://cleverdeploy.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://cleverdeploy.com/</a> and I'll make sure you get 50% off your first year if you decide to use us for real.</p> <p>— Wasim</p> webdev devops startup showdev