Concepts
This page explains the key concepts you’ll encounter when using kubestart.
Clusters
Section titled “Clusters”A kubestart cluster is a fully managed Kubernetes environment. Each cluster is isolated from other tenants and gets:
- Its own Kubernetes API server at
{cluster-id}.k8s.kubestart.io - A wildcard domain
*.{cluster-id}.kubestart.xyzfor exposing services - Resource quotas matching your selected package
- Network isolation from other tenants and host infrastructure
You interact with your cluster using standard kubectl commands, Helm charts, and Kubernetes manifests — the same tools you’d use with any Kubernetes cluster.
Packages
Section titled “Packages”Packages define the resource allocation for your cluster. kubestart offers three packages:
| Small | Medium | Large | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 2 cores | 6 cores | 12 cores |
| Memory | 8 GiB | 12 GiB | 24 GiB |
| Storage | 40 GiB | 120 GiB | 320 GiB |
| Pods | 25 | 100 | 200 |
| Bandwidth | 100 Mbps | 250 Mbps | 500 Mbps |
| Price | €29/mo | €69/mo | €149/mo |
Prepaid billing periods (3, 6, or 12 months) offer discounts up to 15%. See Create a Cluster for the full comparison and Subscriptions for billing details.
Regions
Section titled “Regions”kubestart clusters are deployed in European data center regions. When creating a cluster, choose the region closest to your users for the best latency.
Add-ons
Section titled “Add-ons”Add-ons extend your cluster with optional capabilities. They are pre-configured and tested to work with kubestart clusters. Available add-ons cover:
- Monitoring — Prometheus metrics collection, Alertmanager, and Grafana dashboards.
- Ingress controllers — Traefik, NGINX, Kong, and HAProxy for advanced routing.
- GitOps — Flux and Argo CD for declarative deployments.
- Infrastructure — cert-manager and external-dns for certificate and DNS automation.
Add-ons can be enabled or disabled at any time from the dashboard. See Manage Add-ons for the full catalog.
Networking
Section titled “Networking”Each cluster has isolated networking with full internet access for outbound traffic. Inbound traffic flows through the platform’s Ingress layer. LoadBalancer and NodePort services are not available.
Bandwidth is limited per pod based on your package, and each cluster has a monthly transfer cap. See Networking and Bandwidth & Limits for details.
Kubeconfig
Section titled “Kubeconfig”A kubeconfig file contains the credentials and endpoint information needed to connect to your cluster with kubectl. kubestart generates a unique kubeconfig for each cluster, pointing at your cluster’s API endpoint.
The API endpoint is protected by an IP allowlist — you must add your IP address before you can connect. See Networking for details and Kubeconfig for download instructions.