Connecting Your Render Account

Render is the hosting platform where your product runs. Like GitHub, the connection is set up so that everything belongs to you: services are created in your Render workspace, under your Render account, on your Render billing. Idea to Life configures them; it does not own them.

Create a Render account

1. Sign up at render.com. You can sign up with your GitHub account, which also simplifies deployments later.
2. Verify your email and, if prompted, add a payment method. Some Render features work without one, but databases and paid instance types require it.

Connect to Idea to Life

1. In Idea to Life, go to Settings, then Integrations, then Render.
2. Create a Render API key: in the Render dashboard, open Account Settings, then API Keys, and create a key.
3. Paste the key into Idea to Life and save. It is encrypted at rest, masked from then on, never sent to your browser, and used server-side only.

What gets created when you build

Depending on your blueprint, a build creates one or more of:

• A web service (for apps with server-side logic) or a static site (for content-only sites) connected to your GitHub repository.
• A Postgres database, if your product stores data on Render rather than Supabase.
• Environment variables containing your configuration and secrets.

Typical service settings the platform applies: build command `npm ci --include=dev && npm run build`, start command `npm start`, and health check path `/api/health`. You can see and change all of this in your Render dashboard — it is your account.

Honest words about cost

Render has a free tier, and many small projects run on it, but please read this part carefully:

• Free web services spin down after inactivity, so the first visitor after a quiet period waits several seconds while the service wakes up. Fine for hobby projects, usually not for businesses.
• Postgres databases on Render are not free beyond a short trial period. If your blueprint includes a Render database, expect a monthly charge from Render.
• Always-on instances, more memory, and additional services all cost money, billed by Render to you.

The blueprint tells you before you build whether the plan requires paid Render resources. Idea to Life never bills you for hosting — Render does, at Render's public prices — but we will not pretend deployment is always free, because it is not.

Managing and revoking

You can revoke the API key in Render at any time. Your services keep running and your repository keeps deploying; the platform simply loses the ability to create or reconfigure services until you reconnect. You can also delete services directly in the Render dashboard whenever you want to stop charges.