Onboarding cases
Where you start decides how long setup takes and how well Hetscale fits. Find your row; each case has its own page with the steps.
Onboarding reads your project first: whether there is a load balancer and how many servers stand behind it. Then it asks what no read can show: what runs on the server, where the database is, how you deploy, and whether the domain is behind the Cloudflare proxy, two apps run on two servers or traffic comes in campaigns you know in advance. The answers map to one of these cases with a fit score and an up-front time estimate, before any resource is touched. Hetscale's own setup is about 15 minutes in every case; the rest is prerequisite work on your side.
| Case | Prerequisite work | Time | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| One app, Hetzner load balancer, 2+ servers, registry image | none | 15–20 min | 10/10 |
| Campaign / e-commerce with load balancer | none; wants scheduled scaling | 20 min | 9/10 |
| Coolify multi-server ready | none | 20–30 min | 8/10 |
| CI/SSH deploy, 1–3 servers behind Hetzner load balancer | deploy to the IP Hetscale sends | 1–2 h | 8/10 |
| Stateless API, managed DB, one server, no load balancer | load balancer only | 1 h | 7/10 |
| One app, one server, no load balancer, Compose, TLS on the box, external DB | Hetzner load balancer (€7.49 per month, Hetzner list price, September 2026), TLS to it, DNS to it | 1–2 h | 6/10 |
| One app, one server, behind Cloudflare proxy, no Cloudflare load balancer | Hetzner load balancer behind the proxy, TLS moved to it, proxied DNS record pointed at it | 1–2 h | 6 → 8/10 |
| Kamal | a deploy step that keeps the host list | 1–2 h | 6/10 |
| Two apps, two servers, no load balancer | two Hetzner load balancers | 2–3 h | 5/10 |
| Forge / Ploi | a load balancer, TLS at the balancer, DNS to it, a new release after each panel deploy | half day | 4 → 7/10 |
| Coolify, single server, app + DB together | move DB out, app off the Coolify host, load balancer, proxy setting | half day to a day | 3 → 7/10 |
| WordPress / Plesk single box, local MySQL | re-architecture | days | 1/10 |
| CI/SSH deploy, no load balancer | both of the above: the load balancer and the deploy to the IP Hetscale sends | 2–3 h | 6/10 |
| Database on the app server, any deploy path but Coolify | move the database to a managed service or its own server | half day to a day | 3/10 |
| New to Hetzner, app but no server yet | bring up one server the Hetscale-ready way, then connect | half day | Not yet |
| Queue worker scaling | a worker node group on an external queue signal: a pull endpoint you serve or a push call, no agent | 1–2 h | Phase 5 |
The fit-1 case is declined by preflight with the reason. Users without a load balancer get a "get load-balancer-ready" checklist: a Hetzner load balancer (€7.49 per month, Hetzner list price, 2026-09-17), TLS moved to it, DNS pointed at it. Cloudflare Load Balancing as the balancer is planned. Onboarding recommends a minimum of 2 nodes for zero-downtime healing.