Deploy to production

Put Orbit on Vercel with a Neon database, step by step, with a launch checklist.

1. Create the database

Create a free project at Neon and copy the connection string. It looks like postgres://user:password@host/dbname. Tables are created automatically the first time the app runs.

2. Deploy

Push the project to a private GitHub repository
Import it in Vercel. No special settings are needed
Add environment variables in the Vercel project settings:

Variable	Value
`DATABASE_URL`	Your Neon connection string
`APP_URL`	Your production address, for example `https://app.example.com`
`RESEND_API_KEY` and `MAIL_FROM`	So emails are really sent
`CRON_SECRET`	A long random string
`ADMIN_EMAILS`	Your own email, to use `/admin`

Deploy, then add your custom domain in Vercel

The app refuses to send emailed links until APP_URL is set, on purpose, so a forged request cannot point a reset link at another site.

3. Optional services

Add the Stripe variables from Billing and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from AI assistant when you are ready for them.

Launch checklist

ORBIT_DEMO is not set
Email works: request a password reset and check your inbox
Replace the placeholder customer names, testimonials and statistics in lib/site.ts and lib/copy.ts
Review and replace the privacy and terms pages
Create your first account, then confirm /admin opens only for your email
Place a test order in Stripe test mode before switching to live keys
Turn on database backups in Neon

Scaling notes

Everything runs on serverless functions and a serverless database, so there is nothing to size at first. The database queries use indexes for every workspace-scoped lookup. If traffic grows large, move event storage to a time-series store and keep the rest as it is.