startupjs.ai Docs

Export & self-host your site

Export gives you your whole site as a standalone app — standard source code, your data included, no startupjs.ai required to run it. It's the strongest form of "you own the result": the door out is always open, and it leads somewhere real.

Two ways to use an export

  • Publish the mobile apps — keep your site here. The most common reason to export today: build real App Store / Google Play versions of your mobile app, while the site itself (and all its users, content and plugin setup) stays hosted on startupjs.ai as the apps' backend. No server work at all. Two things to know: a published app's design is a snapshot — content stays live, but after big site changes you re-export and resubmit — and it's best to publish against a custom domain, since apps built on a platform subdomain break if you rename the project.
  • Self-host everything. Run the whole site on your own server, fully independent — and optionally publish the apps against it. This is the technical path; the sections below cover what it takes.

What's in the download

The Export project card on your project's page produces an archive containing a complete, conventional application:

  • Every page and design, as readable source code (a standard JavaScript/React project).
  • Your public content and data, as seed files that load on first start.
  • Active plugins at full fidelity — accounts, emails, payments, AI assistants, custom-API integrations all work in the export, using your own service keys.
  • SELFHOSTING.md — a guide generated for your specific project, covering both paths: publishing the store apps against your hosted site (with your site's real address pre-filled), and running everything yourself — local dev, server deploy, environment variables.

Not included, deliberately: your visitors' accounts, orders and private data. That only matters if you self-host — apps published against your hosted site keep all existing accounts and data, because the backend doesn't change. On a self-hosted copy, visitors start fresh.

What running it yourself takes

Honest framing: this is the one genuinely technical path in the product. Comfort with a terminal — or an AI agent that has it — is assumed. In short:

  • Locally, it's the standard two commands (yarn to install, yarn start to run) — details in your SELFHOSTING.md.
  • On a server, any ordinary Node.js host or VPS works; the guide covers the setup, including the one secret you must set.
  • Plugin services become your accounts: the export sends email through your Mailgun, checks out through your Stripe, signs in through your Google app — the same keys the custom modes use. AI assistants run on your own AI-provider key.

The easy path: hand it to an AI

The export page has a copy-paste prompt for each path — give your AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, and friends) the downloaded archive and the prompt for what you're after: publishing the apps, or setting up a self-hosted copy. The AI reads the included guide and walks you through the rest.

Good to know

  • Exporting is free on every plan, works even from the Trash, and has a small daily cap per project.
  • An export is a snapshot — it doesn't sync back. Changes made on startupjs.ai afterwards aren't in your download (export again anytime), and changes you make to the exported code can't be imported back.
  • Exporting doesn't touch your live site — it keeps running exactly as before.