Changelog

New updates and improvements to Potions.

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Bring your own server, SQLite with Litestream, external databases & more

Potions can now set up a server you already have, and your app's database can be a single SQLite file or a PostgreSQL database hosted anywhere.

Bring your own server

Have a Hetzner dedicated box, a VPS at OVH, Vultr or UpCloud, or a machine of your own? Run one command on it as root, and Potions sets it up exactly like a server it creates: PostgreSQL or SQLite, Caddy with automatic SSL, a firewall and zero-downtime deploys. It needs a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04 on x86_64. The connect script checks the server first and changes nothing if it isn't ready.

If you reinstall the server later, Set up again sets it up from scratch and keeps your apps in Potions.

Get started with the Bring Your Own Server docs.

SQLite and Litestream

An app can now keep its whole database in one SQLite file on its server, with no database server to run. Potions snapshots the file every day and can stream every change to a bucket you own with Litestream, so you can restore the database to any moment in the last seven days. A server that only runs SQLite apps can skip PostgreSQL entirely.

Read the blog post for the full story, or get started with the SQLite and Litestream docs.

External databases

Point an app at Supabase, Neon, DigitalOcean, RDS, or any PostgreSQL database you run elsewhere. Paste its connection URL when you add the app, and Potions checks the connection from your app's server first. If it fails, Potions tells you why, like a provider allowlist that's missing the server's IP. Apps on an external database can be clustered too.

See the External Databases docs for more.

Show improvements
  • Servers can now be renamed: Potions updates the name at your provider and the hostname on the server
  • A per-app custom proxy replaces Caddy's default reverse_proxy line, for upstreams like an HTTP/3 origin
  • App servers and load balancers now allow UDP 443, so browsers can reach your apps over HTTP/3
  • DigitalOcean's Premium Intel sizes are now offered, including in the US regions that stopped listing Regular droplets
  • Potions now checks each server's SSH host key and stops connecting if it changes
  • Fixed: a deploy whose Caddy config was rejected reported success; it now fails with Caddy's error and the previous release keeps serving

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →

Clusters, custom health check paths, deploy commit SHAs & a redesigned dashboard

One Phoenix app across several servers, plus a fresh look for the whole app.

Clusters

You can now run one Phoenix app across several app servers at once, behind a load balancer, with the database on its own server. If a node goes away, the rest keep serving.

Attach, promote, and detach nodes from your app's new Cluster page. Deploys roll node by node, with each one health-checked before traffic switches, and migrations run exactly once on the primary. Apps that rely on Phoenix.PubSub or Presence across nodes can turn on BEAM clustering with one click.

Get started with the Clusters and BEAM Clustering docs.

Custom health check path

You can now choose which path Potions requests to decide your app is up. Every app is checked before traffic switches to a new release, and every minute if uptime monitoring is on. Until now that check always hit /. Set a dedicated route instead, such as /health.

See the Health Checks docs for more.

Deploy commit SHA

Every deploy now injects POTIONS_COMMIT_SHA into your app's environment, carrying the full commit SHA of the release that's running. Point AppSignal's revision, Sentry's release, or your error tracker's equivalent at it, and errors group by deploy instead of by wall clock. After a rollback, it reports the SHA that was actually restored.

See Deploy Metadata for setup with AppSignal, Sentry, Honeybadger, and Bugsnag.

A redesigned dashboard and app

The dashboard is now a fleet view, which scales as more servers and apps are added. We've also updated the design of all app pages.

Show improvements
  • Caddy now restarts itself automatically if it fails, on new and existing servers
  • Fixed: creating your first DigitalOcean server in a region your account had never used failed with a 403
  • Deploy logs show the HTTP status for every health check attempt
  • Health check failure emails name the URL that failed

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →

Dedicated database servers & a batch of fixes

Your database can now live on its own server.

Dedicated database servers

Potions can now provision a server that runs PostgreSQL and nothing else. It's reachable only over your private network, and you can point one or more apps at it.

Apps with a database under 5 GB can be moved to a database server with a single click and zero downtime. For migrating larger databases, see the Dedicated Database Servers docs. Read the blog post for the full story.

Show improvements
  • Backup timeouts now scale with database size
  • Backups UI now includes the server they live on
  • Fixed bug in alert emails
  • Updated DigitalOcean server selection to match your account's options

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →

Wildcard subdomains, tenant custom domains & automatic SSL

Building a product where your customers get their own hostnames? One Phoenix app can now serve unlimited tenant hostnames, with automatic HTTPS.

Wildcard subdomains

Give every tenant their own subdomain, like moonstone.potionshop.xyz and nightshade.potionshop.xyz. A single wildcard certificate covers all of them, so new tenants work instantly. Any DNS provider works.

Tenant custom domains

Your tenants can also bring their own domain, like example.com, with SSL handled automatically. Your app stays in control of which domains get approved.

View the Multi-Tenant Apps & Dynamic Domains docs to get started.

Show improvements
  • Elixir 1.20 and Erlang/OTP 29 are now available when you create or configure an app, along with Node.js 24.
  • Plus a batch of smaller bug fixes and improvements

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →

Offsite database backups, a clearer backup view & more

Database backups can now live somewhere other than your server, providing resiliency for your data.

Offsite database backups

Every backup can now be copied automatically to an S3-compatible bucket that you own. The following providers are supported at launch: Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, and Hetzner Object Storage. That redundancy means your data survives even if the server is lost. Credentials never touch your server, large databases upload in parts, and every offsite restore is checksum-verified.

A clearer backup view

Each database backup will now show you where it lives: Server, Offsite, or both. Expand one to restore from the server or straight from your bucket.

Show improvements
  • Email alerts when a backup or offsite upload fails
  • Plus a batch of smaller bug fixes and improvements

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →

Open signups, Hetzner, monorepo support, easier env variable management, persistent storage & more

A big batch of updates:

Open signups

The waitlist is gone! You can sign up and start deploying right away.

Hetzner Cloud support

Potions can now provision and manage servers on Hetzner Cloud, alongside DigitalOcean. See Connecting Hetzner to get started.

Monorepo support

Phoenix apps that live in a subfolder of a larger repo can now be deployed. Set the Root Directory when adding an app, or configure it later in the app settings.

Improved environment variable management

You can now paste in your entire .env file. This makes it easier to add or update environment variables, and it renders a live preview of which variables are new versus what's changing. You can also export your variables back out in .env format.

Persistent storage for every app

Every app now gets a storage directory on its server that survives deploys. This is helpful for user uploads, generated files, or anything you need to keep around. The path is exposed to your app as the auto-generated STORAGE_DIR environment variable. Read more in Persistent Storage.

Show improvements
  • New docs page: SSH Access & Keys on how to access your server via SSH
  • New docs page: PostgreSQL Extensions — what ships with every Potions Postgres install and how to enable extensions for your database
  • Onboarding flow fixes
  • Subscription fixes
  • Annual billing support

Have a feature you'd like to see in Potions? Tell us →