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Start Building with CNAP

Get your software products live and ready for customers in under 10 minutes. CNAP handles the infrastructure complexity so you can focus on what matters - building and selling great software.

Prerequisites: You’ll need a CNAP account and access to a machine (VPS, cloud instance, or local server) where you can run a simple command.

1

Set Up Your Infrastructure

First, we need to prepare the infrastructure where your products will run. Don’t worry - this is a one-time setup that takes just a few clicks.

  1. Navigate to Clusters in your CNAP dashboard
  2. Click “Add a cluster”
  3. Choose your region (create a custom name for organizing your infrastructure)
  4. Click “Add cluster” to create the cluster

Your Kubernetes API will be ready in 2-3 minutes. You’ll see the status change to “Active” when it’s available.

CNAP manages all the complex Kubernetes operations behind the scenes - certificates, networking, scaling, and monitoring are all handled for you.

2

Connect Your Compute Resources

Now you need to add compute capacity where your products will actually run. This is where your customers’ applications will live.

  1. Click the “Quick Actions” of your active cluster
  2. Click “Add a worker”
  3. Copy the bootstrap command
  1. Get a server - Create a new cloud instance or use an existing machine (minimum: 2 CPU, 4GB RAM)
  2. Connect to your server using your preferred method 
    ssh root@your-server-ip
  3. Run the bootstrap command on your server copied above
3

Create Your First Product

Now it’s time to package your software into a sellable product. This is where you define what customers will buy and deploy.

  1. Navigate to Products in your CNAP dashboard
  2. Click “Add Product”
  3. Choose your software - Select a Helm chart from Artifact Hub or use your own
  4. Select regions - Choose which clusters customers can deploy to (displayed as regions)
  5. Set up pricing (optional) - Connect with Stripe to charge customers

Coming soon: Support for Helm charts from private Git repositories and OCI registries.

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Optional: Set Up Pricing

Want to charge customers for your software? Connect with Stripe to enable paid deployments:

1

Connect Stripe Account

Go to Settings → Stripe and connect your Stripe account to enable payments.

2

Create Pricing in Stripe

In your Stripe dashboard, create products with prices. Examples:

  • $10/month - Monthly subscription
  • $50 - One-time setup fee
  • $5/user/month - Per-seat pricing
3

Link Prices to Your Product

Back in CNAP, your Stripe prices will automatically appear. Select which ones apply to this product.

You can combine multiple prices - customers will pay all selected prices when they deploy your product.

Click “Add Product” to finish creating your sellable software product.

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Continue Building and Selling

You’re set up for success! Your product is live on the Marketplace. Here’s how to start making money:

Simple Math to Your First Million

10 paying customers × 100/month=100/month = 1,000 MRR → $12K ARR → YOUR FIRST MICRO-SAAS

Then scale to 100 customers = 10KMRR→10K MRR → 120K ARR → LIFE-CHANGING INCOME

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Next Steps to Revenue

Customize Your Marketplace

Brand your storefront and optimize for customer conversion

Learn Proven Success Strategies

Study how to turn software into million-dollar businesses

Add More Products

Expand your catalog with additional software offerings

Scale Your Operations

Grow your infrastructure as customer demand increases

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Focus on What Matters Most

With CNAP handling infrastructure complexity, you can focus on activities that directly generate revenue. Successful cloud-native businesses prioritize solving painful customer problems over building infrastructure. They ship features quickly to get from idea to paying customers in days rather than months. Smart pricing means charging $50-100+ monthly for base plans since most successful products price based on value delivered. Finally, targeting specific business segments allows you to serve companies with expensive, specific problems they’ll pay premium rates to solve.

Revenue tip: B2B products typically generate more revenue with fewer customers than B2C products. Focus on business problems worth $100+ per month to solve.

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Need Help?

Pro tip: Start with one server and add more as your customer base grows. CNAP makes it easy to scale your infrastructure without any downtime.