# Choose a Deployment

For most organizations, **Probo Cloud is the recommended starting point**. Choose self-hosting when a specific security, infrastructure, or data-location requirement makes operating Probo yourself necessary.

## Make the decision

Choose **Probo Cloud** if you want:

- a production service without operating application infrastructure;
- updates and security patches applied by Probo;
- managed backups, monitoring, availability, and incident response;
- EU or US data residency;
- new OAuth connectors to work without configuring provider credentials at the deployment level.

Choose **self-hosting** if you require:

- a hosting location outside Probo Cloud's EU and US regions;
- deployment inside a private network or an existing infrastructure boundary;
- direct control over PostgreSQL, object storage, encryption keys, backups, and logs;
- integration with your own ingress, secret management, monitoring, or recovery systems;
- an internally operated platform—and a team prepared to maintain it.

Self-hosting transfers operational control to your organization, but it also transfers responsibility for availability, upgrades, security patches, backups, monitoring, and connector configuration.

## Before you self-host

A production self-hosted deployment needs more than a running Probo container. Confirm that your team can provide and maintain:

- PostgreSQL and S3-compatible object storage with coordinated backups;
- HTTPS ingress, DNS, and certificate renewal;
- stable encryption, cookie, signing, and password-pepper secrets;
- outbound email and any required identity-provider configuration;
- monitoring for application health, capacity, logs, and certificate expiry;
- tested upgrade, rollback, restore, and incident-response procedures;
- OAuth client credentials for each connector your organizations need.

If these responsibilities are outside your team's scope, use Probo Cloud.

## Choose a self-hosted architecture

After deciding to self-host, choose the architecture that matches your operating environment:

|                        | **Docker Compose**                            | **Kubernetes**                                            |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Use when**           | You need a straightforward single-host setup  | Your team already operates Kubernetes                     |
| **Infrastructure**     | One host running the application and services | Cluster, ingress, secrets, and persistent data services   |
| **Operational effort** | Lower initial complexity                      | More flexibility with greater operational complexity      |
| **Production fit**     | Smaller installations with a capable host     | Environments requiring orchestration and managed services |

The local quickstart uses Docker Compose for evaluation. Do not treat its development defaults as a production configuration.

## Start your deployment

- [Probo Cloud](/docs/deployment/cloud) — Review regions, managed operations, security, and shared responsibilities
- [Self-hosted quickstart](/docs/product/getting-started/quickstart) — Run Probo locally with Docker Compose
- [Docker Compose guide](/docs/deployment/self-hosting/docker-compose) — Plan and operate a production single-host deployment
- [Kubernetes guide](/docs/deployment/self-hosting/kubernetes) — Deploy Probo with Helm and managed infrastructure services

Probo Cloud is provisioned through onboarding. To discuss region choice or security requirements, [contact Probo](/contact).

After Probo is available, [set up your organization and first framework](/docs/product/getting-started/first-organization-and-framework).