Platform
Hosting / Self-Hosting
A brintOS machine can serve the internet from two places. Run it in your browser on your own computer — with a public-facing IP address and a registered domain, you're self-hosting, and we never touch your traffic. Or resume it in our cloud and it's hosted: always on, no infrastructure of yours required. Switching is a suspend and a resume, in either direction, as often as you like. Same machine, same disk, no migration. No other platform lets a server move between your computer and the cloud at will.
One machine, two places to serve from
Every brintOS machine is a real Linux system — a wasm32 kernel booting a versioned root filesystem — and a real Linux system can serve traffic. The question is only where it's running when the requests arrive. brintOS gives you two answers, and lets you change your answer whenever you want:
- Self-hosted. The machine runs in your browser tab, on your own computer, on your own electricity. Aim a public-facing IP address and a registered domain at it and it serves your users directly — your hardware is the server.
- Hosted. The machine runs on brintOS servers. It stays up when your laptop is closed, your power is out, or your connection drops — we supply the uptime, the bandwidth, and the machine keeps answering.
These are not two products, two deployments, or two configurations to keep in sync. They are one machine in two possible locations.
Self-hosted: the server is your computer
Because the machine executes in your browser, self-hosting doesn't mean racking hardware or installing a server OS — the computer you're already using is the host. What you bring is reachability: a public-facing IP address and a registered domain pointed at your machine. From there, your users' requests terminate on your hardware.
That has a property no hosted product can offer: we are not in the path. The requests your users send, the responses your machine produces, the sessions, the secrets, the live state in memory — all of it stays on a computer you physically control. We can't read your traffic because it never reaches us.
Hosted: the server is ours
Self-hosting's honest cost is that your computer has to be on. A tab lives and dies with the tab — and a public-facing service shouldn't die because you closed a lid. When you'd rather not be your own datacenter, suspend the machine and resume it in the brintOS cloud. It is now hosted: the same machine, running server-side, answering requests around the clock without a browser open anywhere.
The switch is a suspend and a resume
This is the part nobody else does. Moving a service between self-hosted and hosted is normally a migration project — new environment, new deploy, config drift, downtime windows. On brintOS it's the same live-machine handoff that powers Virtual Private Servers:
- Self-hosted → hosted. Suspend the machine in your tab and resume it in the cloud. It is now hosted — the switch happens automatically with the move. No redeploy, no rebuild, no "cloud version" of your setup.
- Hosted → self-hosted. Suspend it in the cloud and resume it back in your browser. It's self-hosted again, picking up exactly where it left off — the switch is just as automatic in reverse.
- The disk never moves. The root filesystem is versioned, content-addressed cloud storage; your tab and our servers are both just clients of it. A handoff carries the machine's live state, not a disk image — which is why switching is an act of seconds, not an afternoon.
- Mid-process, not re-boot. Suspension captures the whole running machine — every process, open descriptors, kernel state. The service that resumes is the service that suspended, not a fresh boot of it.
Why self-host
- Your data stays yours. Traffic terminates on your machine. We never have access to the requests, responses, or live state of a self-hosted service.
- Zero hosting cost. Your hardware, your bandwidth, your electricity — nothing metered, nothing rented.
- Full physical control. The computer serving your users is one you can see and unplug. No abstraction between you and the box.
- The hardware you already own. No provisioning, no colocation — a browser tab on an ordinary computer is the whole footprint.
Why let us host
- No high-reliability infrastructure to run. Redundant power, uptime monitoring, and serious bandwidth are our problem, not a second job for you.
- Always-on availability. The machine answers at 3 a.m., during your commute, and while your laptop is in a bag.
- Independence from any one device. Nothing depends on a particular computer being open, awake, or connected.
The point
Every other platform makes you choose between the two at design time — and the choice calcifies into your architecture. A brintOS machine makes it a runtime decision. Self-host while you build and while privacy matters most; hand the machine to the cloud for the launch-week traffic or the vacation; take it back whenever you like. The machine doesn't know the difference, and your users never see the seam.
Ready to serve from wherever suits you? See plans, or contact us to talk through a deployment.