Fly.io was founded in 2017 by Kurt Mackey and Thomas Dullien in Chicago. The company’s pitch is straightforward: run your application servers close to your users, everywhere in the world, without the complexity of managing multi-region infrastructure yourself.
Unlike traditional PaaS platforms that deploy to a single region, Fly.io runs apps on hardware in 30+ regions globally. Applications are packaged as Docker images and distributed across Fly’s network of bare-metal servers. The platform uses Firecracker microVMs (originally developed by AWS for Lambda) to provide fast startup times and efficient resource usage.
Fly.io supports any application that can be containerized — Rails, Phoenix (Elixir), Django, Express, Go services, and more. The platform has become especially popular in the Elixir/Phoenix and Ruby on Rails communities. Built-in features include persistent volumes, private networking between apps, automatic TLS, and Fly Postgres (managed PostgreSQL).
The company has raised over $100 million in funding and serves tens of thousands of developers. Fly.io’s pricing is usage-based, and the platform offers a meaningful free tier that lets developers run small applications at no cost.
Fly.io’s team has been outspoken about technical decisions, publishing detailed blog posts about infrastructure, networking, and the challenges of running a global platform. This transparency has built trust and community engagement.
Headquartered in Chicago, Fly.io operates with a distributed team. The platform occupies an interesting niche between simple PaaS services and full cloud providers — it gives developers more control over where their code runs without requiring them to manage the underlying infrastructure.
