Cloud Platforms

Railway

One-click deployment with automatic PostgreSQL provisioning.

After deployment, add environment variables in Railway dashboard:

BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, ENCRYPTION_KEY, INTERNAL_API_SECRET (auto-generated)
OPENAI_API_KEY or other AI provider keys
Custom domain in Settings → Networking

VPS Deployment

For DigitalOcean, AWS EC2, Azure VMs, or any Linux server:

Recommended: 16 GB RAM Droplet, Ubuntu 24.04

# Create Droplet via console, then SSH in
ssh root@your-droplet-ip

Recommended: t3.xlarge (16 GB RAM), Ubuntu 24.04

ssh -i your-key.pem ubuntu@your-ec2-ip

Recommended: Standard_D4s_v3 (16 GB RAM), Ubuntu 24.04

ssh azureuser@your-vm-ip

Install Docker

# Install Docker (official method)
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

# Logout and reconnect, then verify
docker --version

Deploy Sim Studio

git clone https://github.com/simstudioai/sim.git && cd sim

# Create .env with secrets
cat > .env << EOF
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:postgres@db:5432/simstudio
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
INTERNAL_API_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL=https://sim.yourdomain.com
BETTER_AUTH_URL=https://sim.yourdomain.com
NEXT_PUBLIC_SOCKET_URL=https://sim.yourdomain.com
EOF

# Start
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

SSL with Caddy

# Install Caddy
sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https curl
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install caddy

# Configure (replace domain)
echo 'sim.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
    handle /socket.io/* {
        reverse_proxy localhost:3002
    }
}' | sudo tee /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

sudo systemctl restart caddy

Point your domain's DNS A record to your server IP.

Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE)

See the Kubernetes guide for Helm deployment on managed Kubernetes.

Managed Database (Optional)

For production, use a managed PostgreSQL service:

AWS RDS / Azure Database / Cloud SQL - Enable pgvector extension
Supabase / Neon - pgvector included

Set DATABASE_URL in your environment:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/db?sslmode=require"