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Get started

PivoCloud builds your app from your own Dockerfile, runs it on infrastructure in Algeria, and bills you in dinars. This page takes you from a new account to a deployed app.

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1. Sign up and verify the email

Register in the PivoCloud console with an email address and a password. The submit button is Create account. The panel that follows says Registration successful! and asks you to check your email for a verification link. Click that link before you do anything else. Signing in is gated on the email being verified, so an account whose link has not been clicked cannot log in at all. If the message never arrives, the same panel carries a Resend verification link that sends it again.

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2. Complete your profile and claim the credit

A new account starts with a wallet balance of zero. When PivoCloud is offering a starting credit, it is not granted automatically at signup. You claim it, and a person approves the claim. The amount is shown on the dashboard banner and on the Wallet page. When no starting credit is offered, neither of them mentions one, and you add credit by top-up instead (what does it cost, and when am I charged). Two steps, in this order. Fill in your profile. On the Profile page, fill First name, Last name and Phone number, then submit Save profile. All three are required before a claim is possible. While any of them is empty, the button on the dashboard banner reads Complete Profile and brings you to this page. Phone number has to be an Algerian mobile: ten digits beginning 05, 06 or 07, in the shape the field’s own placeholder shows, e.g. 0555 12 34 56. International notation for the same number is accepted, so there is nothing to guess: a leading +213 is understood, and spaces and hyphens between the digits are ignored. Anything else is refused with Enter a valid Algerian mobile number (05, 06, or 07), and the profile stays incomplete until it is fixed. Claim the credit. Once the profile is complete, the dashboard banner’s button reads Claim Now. The Wallet page carries the same action on its Free Credits card, where the button reads Claim followed by the amount. Either one works, so click it once. Then expect a wait. The approval is not automatic: someone at PivoCloud reviews the claim by hand, so the credit does not appear the moment you click. While the claim is waiting, the dashboard shows this line in place of the banner: Your free credit claim is being reviewed. We'll add it to your wallet once approved. The Free Credits card on the Wallet page shows the same claim as Pending Review. There is nothing more to do until it is decided.

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3. What the credit buys

The starting credit is spent like any other credit on your balance. What each app plan and database tier costs per month, and so how far the credit goes, is on what does it cost, and when am I charged.

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4. The three things to do first

In this order. The failure that costs a new customer their first hour is a repository that cannot build, so the check comes before everything else. 1. Check that your repository meets the deployment contract. PivoCloud builds from the Dockerfile in your repository and reads the first EXPOSE line in it to know which port to reach your app on. Six rules decide whether a repository deploys, and most first deploys that fail, fail on the first two. Read what your repository needs before you create an app, and fix anything it turns up while you still have an empty account. 2. Connect your GitHub account. PivoCloud pulls your code through the PivoCloud GitHub App, which you install once and point at the repositories you want it to see. Private repositories work through that connection, and so does deploying on every push. See connecting GitHub. 3. Deploy it. Create the app, pick the repository and the branch, choose the subdomain your app answers on, and watch the build. If your app needs API keys, database URLs or any other configuration, set them as environment variables on the app before or after the first deploy; changing one replaces the container, so the new value is live within a deploy. See deploying your first app.