OtaKitWhere to host Capacitor OTA updates: your options compared
Managed service, self-hosted server, or roll-your-own on a CDN? The real tradeoffs of each way to host Capacitor OTA updates on cost, reliability, and maintenance — with OtaKit as the static-CDN option.
Once you've decided to ship Capacitor updates over the air, the next question is where the bundles actually live and who serves them. There are three realistic answers — a managed service, a self-hosted server, or a fully roll-your-own setup on a CDN — and they differ a lot on cost, reliability, and how much of your weekend they consume. Here's the honest comparison, with OtaKit as the static-CDN option.
The three options
| Option | You operate | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Managed service | Nothing — vendor hosts delivery + control plane | You want zero infra and predictable behavior |
| Self-hosted | Storage, CDN, and control plane on your infra | Compliance, data residency, or control rules |
| Roll your own | Everything, including the update logic | You have unusual needs and time to maintain it |
Managed
The vendor hosts both the delivery and the control plane; you cut releases with a CLI and never think about infrastructure. The thing to check is the pricing model: many managed services meter monthly active users or bandwidth, so your bill grows with your install base. OtaKit's managed offering is CDN-direct with no MAU or bandwidth metering — most apps pay $0–25/mo. See the pricing math vs Capgo.
Self-hosted
You run the control plane and serve bundles from your own storage and CDN. This is the right call for data-residency and compliance requirements. The feasibility depends entirely on the delivery model: because OtaKit serves a static signed manifest per (app, channel, runtimeVersion) lane rather than a dynamic per-device endpoint, self-hosting is object storage plus a CDN — not a request-per-launch backend. See self-hosted live updates.
Roll your own
You can host static bundles on a CDN and write your own update-check logic in the app. People do this and it works — until you need the parts that are easy to underestimate: signed manifests, hash verification, atomic activation, automatic rollback, delta assembly, and runtime-version compatibility. That's a real project to build and maintain safely. Most teams reach for it, discover the edge cases, and adopt a purpose-built tool.
The hidden cost in roll-your-own is safety, not delivery. Serving a zip from a CDN is trivial. Guaranteeing a bad bundle can't brick the app — and recovers automatically when it does — is the hard part, and it's exactly what you don't want to get wrong on production devices.
How to choose
- Just want it to work: managed, no metering.
- Compliance/control: self-hosted the same open-source stack.
- Genuinely unusual needs + time: roll your own, but budget for the safety features.
Where to go next
Read how OTA works to see what any hosting option has to get right, then self-host docs if you're going that route.