Running Pimi on Pimi: our products on our own tools

· Updated

What PimiDeploy set up, what PimiPulse watches, where the mail goes, and what running it ourselves has shown us so far.

Yes, Pimi runs on Pimi. PimiDeploy set up the servers behind PimiDesk’s API and behind PimiPulse, and it deploys both. PimiPulse watches those servers. Mail to [email protected] is answered in PimiDesk. PimiPulse is new and PimiDeploy is in private testing, so this is also how we test them: on servers whose outages we would feel ourselves.

Here is what each one does for us today, and what that has shown us.

PimiDeploy set up both servers and deploys to them

PimiDeploy is a server panel for Laravel apps and WordPress sites on a server you own. Two Pimi products live on servers it provisioned.

PimiDesk’s API, at desk-api.pimi.io. On 2026-10-11 the API moved to a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 server. Provisioning a server like it takes under three minutes: nginx, PHP 8.4, MariaDB 10.11, Redis and Node. The security settings go on at that first provision: key-only SSH, fail2ban, automatic security updates and the firewall. The panel then imported the database, wrote the app’s .env, ran the first deploy and started the queue worker and the scheduler. The API was down for about 10 minutes during the move. Since then, a push to the main branch is a deploy.

PimiPulse, at pulse.pimi.io. The same day, PimiPulse went from a bare server to live in about an hour. Every step went through PimiDeploy’s API and not through the screen: provisioning, the site, its .env, a Let’s Encrypt certificate, the first deploy, the scheduler and a queue worker. Merges to main have deployed it by webhook since.

What this does not show: PimiDeploy is not open to anyone else yet. Nobody outside Pimi can sign in to it, and it has no price.

PimiPulse watches the servers PimiDeploy set up

Both servers run the PimiPulse monitor. It reads the server’s own counters and sends one report a minute. It only reads, and PimiPulse holds no key or login for either server. On a real server the monitor uses about 8 MB of memory.

The monitor also updates itself, and our servers were the first real ones to do it. We release a new version to one server, wait until it reports healthy, then let the rest follow. Two versions have gone out that way so far, with no failed update.

One thing a monitor cannot do is report its own server going dark. So PimiDeploy checks pulse.pimi.io from outside every five minutes and emails after three failures. Each tool covers a gap the other has.

The mail lands in PimiDesk

[email protected] is a PimiDesk inbox. The “Email me when it opens” form on the PimiDeploy page sends to it too. A question about any Pimi product is answered from the same place, which is the job PimiDesk exists to do.

PimiDesk is the live one of the three, open for sign-up.

What running on it has shown us

These came out of using the tools for real, not from a test plan.

  1. Moving a real app showed what the panel lacked. Before the PimiDesk move we compared every setting of the old server with what PimiDeploy could do. The gaps became features: importing a database from another host with a safety copy first, database and cache tuning from the panel, the security settings at first provision, and a choice of MySQL or MariaDB.
  2. A rehearsal found the import bug before the move did. A test copy of the PimiDesk database would not import as dumped. We fixed the import, then moved production.
  3. A failed first deploy was hard to read. A private repository added by its https address ended in a bare git error with no hint. A clearer failure message is next on the list. It is not built yet.
  4. “No data yet” is not “healthy”. A server that had not sent its first report showed as green in PimiPulse. It now says “Waiting” until the first report arrives.
  5. The monitor needs an outside check. That is the five-minute check above. We only saw the gap when PimiPulse started watching its own server.

What is still not true

Pimi is not a finished stack you can adopt in one go. PimiDeploy is in private testing, with no sign-up and no date; you can leave an email on its page and get one message when it opens. PimiPulse is open to everyone: sign up free for up to three servers. PimiPay, the fourth product, is a pair of WooCommerce plugins on its own site and plays no part in this setup.

What we can say is narrower and checkable: the tools we ask you to trust with a server are the ones holding ours.

This post is about PimiDeploy, part of Pimi.