The following guide helps you navigate to get your product live with the CNAP dashboard, instead of using the interactive quickstart.

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Getting Started

1

Set Up Your Infrastructure

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.

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
Creating infrastructure in CNAP dashboard

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
Infrastructure setup command in dashboard
  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
Infrastructure setup command in the CNAP dashboard.

Want to test locally first? Use Multipass to test worker setups on your local machine for free before buying production servers. Perfect for development and testing scenarios.

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
adding a product

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

4

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.

connect stripe
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
stripe add product
3

Link Prices to Your Product

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

price selection

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.