What "59 seconds" means

The old plans page said "59 second Activation" next to every plan. Nobody ever asked us what it meant. We're keeping the number for the relaunch, so we should probably say.

59 seconds is the time from a paid order to a server you can log in to over SSH.

The clock starts when your payment is confirmed. It stops when the server has booted for the first time and answers on port 22.

What happens inside those 59 seconds#

The platform has to reserve the server's CPU and RAM, create its NVMe disk, write your distribution onto it, assign its IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and boot it. The new system also generates its SSH host keys on that first boot. That bit is the guest's job, and it's surprisingly slow on some images.

The animation on our home page shows those steps on a 59-second clock. It's an illustration. We haven't got recordings yet.

What we don't count#

At launch you pay in Bitcoin. A Bitcoin payment isn't confirmed the moment you send it, and how long that takes depends on the network, not on us. So the clock starts when the confirmation arrives.

We could start it when you click "pay" and blame block times for the rest, but then the number wouldn't mean anything.

Nor do we count the time between the server being ready and you typing ssh.

How we'll measure it#

The platform already records when a payment confirms, and when the server's build finishes and it's marked as running. What it doesn't record yet is the moment SSH first answers, which is where the clock is meant to stop. That's the piece we still have to add before we quote a real number.

This is one of the quieter reasons we're building our own billing and panel. Every timestamp comes from systems we run. There's no gap between a billing product and a provisioning product for time to fall into.

It's a goal for now#

We haven't taken a real order on the new platform. So there's no measured number to give you yet.

What we can say is that every step above is something we control and can make faster. Each base image is downloaded and checksummed once per machine, not fetched again for every order. Disks are created on local NVMe. Addresses come from a pool, so nobody has to type them in.

Once real orders are running, we'll publish the real times, slow ones included.

Why it matters to us#

When you've decided you need a machine, you should be on it while you still remember what for. That was the idea in 2011 and it hasn't changed.

If you'd like to be one of the first orders, join the waitlist at the bottom of the page. What happens when you order a server covers the rest of the order, and when your server arrives, Connect to your server with SSH is where to go next.