# Introduction

> What Watasu is, who it's for, and what it removes from your plate.

Watasu is a platform for shipping applications. You bring your code; Watasu builds it, runs it, exposes it on the internet, and gives you managed databases, caches, streams, storage, and observability around it.

You don't write Kubernetes manifests, manage ingress controllers, provision certificates, run database operators, or stand up a Grafana for every project. You operate at the app and service layer.

## Who Watasu is for

Watasu is built for teams that want to spend their time on product, not on infrastructure. It fits especially well when your application is:

* stateless in the app layer
* configured through environment variables
* happy to use managed backing services
* deployed from a Git repository

If you've used a similar developer platform before, the model will feel familiar. If you haven't, the rest of this section gets you running and explains the concepts you'll meet.

## What Watasu gives you

Out of the box, every app gets:

* a build pipeline (Cloud Native Buildpacks, or your own `Dockerfile`)
* container runtime with web and worker processes
* a managed `*.watasuhost.com` URL with TLS
* streaming logs
* one-command access to managed PostgreSQL, Valkey, ClickHouse, Redpanda, and S3-compatible object storage
* Grafana with logs, metrics, and traces, provisioned automatically the first time you attach a monitoring add-on
* GitHub integration with auto-deploy, pipelines, promotions, and review apps
* custom domains with managed TLS

Billing is prepaid: you top up a balance and usage draws it down, so there are no surprise invoices at the end of the month. See [Billing and Limits](https://docs.watasu.io/admin/billing-and-limits.md).

## What you still own

Watasu doesn't pretend to make product decisions for you. You decide:

* what your app does and how it's structured
* which runtime, framework, and dependencies to use
* which services it needs and what plans they should run on
* how many web and worker processes to run
* which environment variables it needs

## Where to go next

* **[Quickstart](https://docs.watasu.io/getting-started/quickstart.md)** — deploy something in five minutes
* **[Core Concepts](https://docs.watasu.io/getting-started/concepts.md)** — the short vocabulary that explains Watasu
* **[CLI Command Reference](https://docs.watasu.io/cli/reference.md)** — every `watasu` command, on one page

[View this page on the web](https://docs.watasu.io/getting-started/introduction/)