BYOK vs BYOC
BYOK is the StoreFrame production model — you bring cloud API keys, StoreFrame provisions servers on your account. BYOC describes the trial period only, when servers run on StoreFrame-owned infrastructure.
StoreFrame runs your Magento stack on real cloud servers — but it does not host those servers itself in production. Every paid environment runs on infrastructure you own, billed directly to you by your cloud provider. This is the BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys) model. The only exception is the 3-day trial, where StoreFrame provides the server for evaluation purposes — sometimes informally called BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud, inverted: StoreFrame's cloud).
BYOK — the production model
In BYOK mode you give StoreFrame an API token for your cloud provider account. StoreFrame uses that token to create, modify, and destroy servers on your behalf:
- You generate credentials in your provider dashboard (Hetzner, UpCloud, Linode, or DigitalOcean — see /docs/get-started/quickstart/providers)
- You store the token in HUB at Settings → Organization → Providers
- When you create a Project, HUB calls the provider API with your token and provisions a server under your account
- The server's compute, disk, and bandwidth charges land on your provider invoice, not on your StoreFrame invoice
StoreFrame's bill to you is only the slot fee — €50/month per Project, €10/month per Stage. That is for orchestration, monitoring, deployment automation, SSL, SSH access, HUB UI, and the AI-assisted operations tools. Server resources are entirely your line item with your provider.
Why BYOK
This split exists because cloud infrastructure costs vary dramatically by region, instance size, and bandwidth profile. A high-traffic Dutch storefront on a Hetzner CCX33 in Falkenstein is a very different cost from a small B2B catalog on a Hetzner CX22. Charging a flat managed-hosting fee would either price out small merchants or undersell large ones.
BYOK also means:
- You own the server. If you stop paying StoreFrame, the server keeps running. Your data and your infrastructure stay under your control.
- You set the scaling profile. Upgrade the VM in HUB and the change is applied immediately on your provider account — there is no contract negotiation.
- You can audit costs directly. Provider dashboards show exactly what you spent on compute and bandwidth.
BYOC — the trial only
The 3-day trial is the one period where StoreFrame provides the server. The trial exists so you can evaluate the platform without setting up cloud accounts, API tokens, or paying for compute. While the trial is running:
- The VM runs on StoreFrame-owned infrastructure
- No cloud API token is required to start
- No credit card is required to start
- The environment is destroyed automatically when the trial ends or you subscribe
This is the period some operators refer to as "BYOC" — even though the cloud is StoreFrame's, not yours. The naming is awkward; the operational reality is just "trial environment, hosted by StoreFrame, ephemeral."
When you subscribe at the end of (or during) a trial, StoreFrame provisions a new production environment on your BYOK infrastructure and syncs the trial's Magento data to it. The trial VM is then destroyed. From that point forward, every environment in your organization is BYOK.
See /docs/billing/trials for the full trial lifecycle.
What goes on which bill
| Charge | Billed by | When |
|---|---|---|
| Project slot (€50/month) | StoreFrame | Monthly, on the 1st |
| Stage slot (€10/month each) | StoreFrame | Monthly, on the 1st |
| Server compute / disk / bandwidth | Your cloud provider | According to the provider's billing cycle |
| Trial environment | Nobody | Free, 3 days, once per organization |
The slot fees are predictable and uniform. The cloud provider charges depend entirely on the server type, region, and bandwidth profile you select when creating each environment.
Supported providers
StoreFrame supports Hetzner Cloud, UpCloud, Linode (Akamai), and DigitalOcean for BYOK provisioning. Step-by-step setup guides are in /docs/get-started/quickstart/providers.
The BYOK model is provider-agnostic — what matters is that StoreFrame can call the provider's API with credentials you supply, create servers, and destroy them on demand. UpCloud uses username and password; the other supported providers use API tokens.
Security posture
Your API token is stored encrypted at rest. StoreFrame never has access to your provider account credentials beyond what the token grants — and you scope the token's permissions yourself. The recommended scope for Hetzner is:
- Read access to server types and locations
- Write access to create / modify / delete servers
- Write access to SSH keys (so org-registered keys are installed at provision time)
Avoid root or unrestricted tokens when a project-scoped token works.
Related
- Cloud providers — how to create a provider token and register it
- Trials — what the trial covers and how subscription converts it to BYOK
- Slot model — pricing primitive for what StoreFrame charges