Granite blog

A solo-founder decision framework for choosing between Docker Compose, Kubernetes, and managed platforms. Includes a five-step decision tree, signals that you've outgrown Compose, and common mistakes early-stage teams make.

This guide covers everything involved in pulling images from private registries — from the initial docker login to handling authentication in CI, managing tags and digests, and troubleshooting the errors you'll inevitably encounter.

This article covers how Docker layer caching actually works, how to structure your Dockerfile to maximize cache hits, and how to wire it all up in CI so the cache persists between builds.

You run `docker start container`, and nothing happens. Or worse — it exits immediately with a cryptic error you've never seen before. The container worked yesterday. Now it doesn't. This guide covers every major reason a container fails to start and gives you concrete steps to fix each one.

Granite's April 2026 update introduces Build from Source — a Dockerfile-free deployment flow via GitHub integration — alongside billing cost visibility, form progress autosave, and dashboard performance improvements.

You pulled an image from Docker Hub, it works, and now you want to see the Dockerfile behind it. Maybe you need to customize it, audit it for security, or just understand how the image was built. The problem is that Docker Hub doesn't store Dockerfiles — it stores images. And images are not Dockerfiles.

You've built something. Now you need to ship it — fast, reliably, and without becoming a DevOps engineer overnight. That's exactly what a Dockerfile is for. This guide walks you through the core concepts, real syntax, and practical patterns you need to containerize and deploy your first application. No fluff, no unnecessary theory.

This article breaks down how Heroku's PostgreSQL pricing and limits compare to Granite in 2026, with enough detail for you to make a real decision in the next hour.

For solo technical founders launching an MVP on a tight budget, Railway offers the lowest entry cost and fastest setup, while Granite provides a compelling all-in-one alternative with integrated storage and CDN for a predictable $9/month—making either a better starting point than Fly.io or Render for most early-stage projects.

A practical guide to serving a static frontend build locally using Docker Compose, covering everything from a simple Nginx volume mount to full-stack setups with proxying, environment variables, and common troubleshooting fixes.