Hosted or self-hosted

The edge has to read each request to check it, so it terminates TLS. On the hosted service that edge is Houseguest™’s. If no third party may see your traffic, run the edge yourself.

	Hosted	Self-hosted
Status	Early access	Early access, on the Enterprise plan
The edge runs	On Houseguest’s servers	On a small Linux server you run, installed with one command
The agent runs	Inside your network, as a Docker container or a systemd service	The same
Console	console.houseguest.dev	console.<your domain>
Addresses	The app’s own hostnames, or Houseguest addresses	The app’s own hostnames
Your public DNS	Each shared hostname points at Houseguest, under a domain verified with a TXT record. Houseguest addresses need none	Each shared hostname points at your edge. No domain verification
Email	Sent by Houseguest	Sent through your own mail provider (SMTP)
Who can see preview traffic	Houseguest’s edge decrypts it to check each request	Only you
Workspaces	Each customer is its own workspace; one person can belong to several	One workspace
Fits	Teams that want a preview in minutes	Teams that cannot let a third party see their traffic

Choosing

• Start hosted if you want to try Houseguest on a real app today. There is nothing to run except the agent.
• Self-host if your policy forbids a third party terminating TLS for internal apps, or if you need the edge in a particular region or network. The self-hosted edition is available on the Enterprise plan. Contact [email protected]. See Self-hosting the edge.

On either, the agent is the same, its allow-list is the ceiling, and your app’s own login stays in place.

What differs in the console

A self-hosted edge has one workspace and no domain verification: any hostname an agent forwards can be previewed once its public DNS points at your edge. Houseguest addresses, the Domains & addresses page and Billing exist only on the hosted service. Everything else in these docs applies to both.