Hey everyone 👋
I want to share an update about how we’re evolving our Cloud offering, specifically around the Starter Cloud tier.
As Directus has grown, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at how people are using the platform and where we can make the biggest long-term impact. One thing has become clear: the Starter Cloud tier is no longer the right fit for how our community builds with Directus today.
After a lot of consideration, we’ve made the tough decision to retire this tier.
Starter Cloud was originally created to offer a simple, low-friction way to get started evaluating Directus and it absolutely served that purpose.
But the reality is that running fully isolated, production-grade infrastructure for a large number of tiny instances has become expensive, rigid, and increasingly difficult to deliver at the level of quality we expect of ourselves.
We want every user, regardless of scale, to have the best experience at the best price…and Starter simply can’t meet that bar anymore in a cost-effective way.
At the same time, we’ve seen a clear and accelerating trend across the platform: teams with smaller projects are choosing to self-host. It gives them the full Directus stack, total control over performance and deployment, and the flexibility to use their own highly optimized infrastructure…often at a lower cost than any managed tier could offer.
So, our goal is to make self-hosting even easier. We’re investing in docs, guides, and partnerships to ensure that deploying (or migrating) your project on your own infrastructure is straightforward, fast, and affordable.
Today, we’re excited to share the first step in that direction: our official Directus CMS template is now live on Railway. With one click, anyone can spin up a full Directus project on a lightweight, cost-efficient platform.
This is just the beginning; we’re already working on more templates, guides, and deployment options to make getting started anywhere as smooth as possible.
We know any change raises questions, and we’re committed to making this transition seamless for everyone affected. If you’re currently using Starter Cloud, we’ll be here to support you every step of the way…whether that’s moving to a new Cloud tier, migrating to self-hosted, or answering anything that comes up.
Thank you for being part of this community, and for continuing to build amazing things with Directus.