Coming from Fly.io

Why teams leave Fly

Fly makes it easy to run containers close to users. But usage-based billing is hard to forecast, the platform decides which regions and machine sizes you get, and “Fly Postgres” is a Postgres you manage on Fly machines.

Railyard gives you the same container-first workflow on a Linux server in your own cloud account (such as DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr or AWS), or on any Ubuntu box you can SSH into. Your provider bills you directly, at their price, and Railyard manages Postgres, Redis and backups for you.

The fast way: the importer (beta)

Applications → New app → Import from Heroku / Render / Fly. Choose Fly.io, paste a token from fly tokens create org and enter your Fly organization (it defaults to personal). Pick an app, review what will be copied, then import and deploy. Railyard keeps your token only for this import and forgets it after 30 minutes.

What the importer brings from Fly’s Machines API:

• The exact image Fly is running, pulled with your token as the registry password, so nothing is rebuilt.
• Environment variables from the machine config, and the internal port.
• Secret names. Fly never reveals secret values, so the review page lists them for you to enter again.

What it only flags for you:

• Other process groups (a worker, say) aren’t copied. Add them as workers.
• Volumes start empty. Copy their files over yourself (see below).
• Postgres data is not copied by the Fly importer. Move it with a dump (see below).
• Domains are listed, not attached. Add them once the new app is live.

Beta: the importer is tested against Fly’s documented API responses, and on prod it reaches Fly’s API. It hasn’t yet been run end to end against a real Fly account. If something doesn’t come across, use the manual steps below and tell us.

The manual way

1. Add a server. Railyard can create one in your cloud account, or you can connect one you already have. See Add a server.
2. Create the app. If your repo has a Dockerfile, as most Fly apps do, point Railyard at the repo and it builds from it. Or deploy the image you already push to a registry. See Deploy a Docker image.
3. Set the port. Use the internal_port from your fly.toml [http_service] or [[services]] section.
4. Bring your config. Copy the [env] block from fly.toml into Variables. fly secrets list shows the secret names; paste the values from wherever you keep them.
5. Add a database. Attach Postgres (and Redis if you use it). Railyard creates the database and sets DATABASE_URL / REDIS_URL.
6. Deploy and check the app on its temporary sslip.io address.
7. Move the data. Open a tunnel with fly proxy 15432:5432 -a <your-postgres-app>, run pg_dump -Fc against localhost:15432, then upload the dump with Resources → Import data on the Railyard app. The upload shows progress, and you can cancel it. For files on a Fly volume, use fly ssh sftp get (or tar over fly ssh console) and restore them into the app’s volume or bucket.
8. Cut DNS over. Add your domain in Railyard, then point the record at your server. Fly keeps serving until the record changes, so nothing goes down. Then scale the Fly app to zero and delete it.

How Fly concepts map

Fly	Railyard
Machines in several regions	One or more servers you own. An app’s web process can run on several servers behind the primary
Process groups ([processes])	Process types: web plus workers, from a Procfile or set by hand
release_command	Release command, run once before the new version takes traffic
Health checks	A health path. The new version must pass it before traffic moves
Volumes	Volumes on the server, with backups
Fly Postgres / Managed Postgres	Managed Postgres on your server or on a database server, with verified backups and point-in-time restore
fly deploy	git push, railyard deploy, or a push to GitHub
fly logs / fly ssh console	railyard logs --follow / railyard run and the Console tab
Auto-stop machines	App sleep: idle stagings sleep and wake on the next request

What’s different

Railyard doesn’t run an anycast edge. Your app is served from your server’s region, and there’s no automatic multi-region routing yet. In return, the bill is a flat server price you can predict, the machines are yours, and if you stop using Railyard your app keeps running.