Quickstart: deploy a pod

Five minutes. One pod. Live on the internet.

Open console.microapps.io and sign in. (No account yet? Register here.)

2. Make sure you have credit

Open Billing in the sidebar. You need at least $3 of credit to run a pod. If you're short, click Add credit and top up.

3. Create a pod

Open Pods → New and fill it in:

Field	Pick	Notes
Workload	Ubuntu	The OS. MySQL here would give you a database pod instead.
Version	24.04	Ubuntu's versions are 22.04 and 24.04.
Compute	Tiny (1 vCPU, 0.5 GB RAM)	Bump this up any time with a Resize.
Region	(nearest to you)	Where the pod runs. Required.
Storage	Tiny (5 GB)	Disk. Grows later, never shrinks.
SSH key	(optional)	Paste a public key or pick a saved one. Skip it and we'll show you a login password once.
Network	(optional)	Attach a private network if you have one. Blank puts the pod on its own brand-new private network.
Firewall	(optional)	Blank creates an allow-all firewall for this pod - open to everyone until you tighten it.

Click Create Pod.

4. Watch it come up

You land on the pod's page. Status moves from Initializing to Running, usually in under a minute. Open the Connection Strings tab to find:

The pod's public host (what you connect to from the internet)
The external port mapped to SSH (e.g. 3001, forwarding to internal 22)
The login username (ubuntu)
The pod's private host (how other pods on the same network reach it)

Grab the password now if you see one

If you didn't add an SSH key, a one-time login password is shown at creation and never again. Copy it somewhere safe. Added a key instead? Then there's no password to copy - you log in with the key.

5. Connect

SSH from your laptop using the external port from the Connection Strings tab:

bash

ssh -p 3001 ubuntu@your-pod.microapps.io

(Swap in the external port and public host shown on your pod.)

Or skip SSH entirely and click Shell in the console for an in-browser terminal - no port, no client, no key required.

6. Verify it's yours

bash

uname -a
df -h
free -m

That's it. You have a pod. Billing is hourly from your credit for as long as it exists - see the pricing page for the rate. Have fun.

Quickstart: deploy a pod ​

1. Sign in ​

2. Make sure you have credit ​

3. Create a pod ​

4. Watch it come up ​

5. Connect ​

6. Verify it's yours ​

Next steps ​