Deploying Phoenix/Elixir to UpCloud - 2026 advice?

Hi there,

I’m in the process of deploying a Phoenix app to a EU host (UpCloud specifically), where the instances provided are mostly raw VMs with an init script (you can manage the VMs with Terraform & Ansible later if needed).

I am interested to hear about people who went that road recently:

  • building releases locally & pushing them via SSH, to start (I’m working locally on Mac OS)
  • picking a server (nginx/caddie versus raw cowboy/bandit with SSL?)
  • later : building releases on the code hosting (e.g. GitHub) & do CD from there
  • potentially, the init scripts that you may have used
  • no docker necessarily for now, but that may come later

What are your preferred resources, scripts & snippets to achieve that?

I went through the forum but so far found mostly outdated advice.

Thanks!