How to deploy and use Unleash: step-by-step deployment guide

Unleash is an open source feature management platform that helps teams control feature rollout, run experiments, and manage feature flags across environments. It’s widely used for gradual rollouts, A/B testing, and operational feature control.

With Northflank, you can host Unleash in minutes using the Unleash stack template or configure everything manually. Northflank handles scaling, networking, storage, and security, so you can focus on managing feature flags instead of managing servers.

If you’re new to the platform and wondering what Unleash is, it’s a feature management system that lets you create, manage, and evaluate feature toggles across services and environments.

You can manage strategies, segments, and environments from a single dashboard. Many teams host Unleash on Docker, connect it to PostgreSQL for persistence, and use it to safely roll out features and run experiments in production.

Before getting started, create a Northflank account.

• Deploying Unleash with a one-click template on Northflank
• Deploying Unleash manually on Northflank

The easiest way to run Unleash on Northflank is through the Unleash one-click template. It creates a project, a deployment service, and databases, all with required settings preconfigured. This is ideal if you want to launch Unleash quickly without manually setting up everything.

The Unleash stack template includes:

• A deployment service running the official unleashorg/unleash-server:latest Docker image
• A PostgreSQL addon for storing feature toggles, segments, and runtime data
• A secret group for configuring default admin credentials and database connection variables

This setup gives you a complete Unleash feature management environment, ready to manage flags with minimal configuration.

1. Create an account on Northflank
2. Click Deploy Unleash now to open the template
3. Select Deploy stack to automatically provision the deployment and PostgreSQL database
4. Wait for the Unleash service to finish deploying
5. Open the Unleash service from your Northflank dashboard
6. Access the generated public domain to reach your Unleash dashboard
7. (Optional) Add a custom domain for production or branded access

If you prefer configuring everything yourself or want to customise compute plans, networking, or storage, you can deploy Unleash manually.

You can also modify the one-click template if you want to extend or customise the default deployment.

Log in to your Northflank dashboard, then click the “Create new” button (+ icon) in the top-right corner. Then, select “Project” from the dropdown.

Projects serve as workspaces that group together related services, making it easier to manage multiple workloads and their associated resources.

You’ll need to fill out a few details before moving forward.

• Enter a project name, such as unleash-project and optionally pick a colour for quick identification in your dashboard.

• Select Northflank Cloud as the deployment target. This uses Northflank’s fully managed infrastructure, so you do not need to worry about Kubernetes setup or scaling.

  (Optional) If you prefer to run on your own infrastructure, you can select Bring Your Own Cloud and connect AWS, GCP, Azure, or on-prem resources.

• Choose a region closest to your users to minimise latency.

• Click Create project to finalise the setup.

Inside your project, go to the Addons tab at the top menu and click "Create new addon". Then, select  PostgreSQL as the Addon type, give it a descriptive name such as unleash-db . Select your preferred version, and choose a compute plan size.

• If you’re testing or experimenting, the smallest option is cost-effective and sufficient.
• For production, we recommend starting with nf-compute-50. This provides more resources and stability, ensuring Unleash runs reliably under real workloads.

Once you’ve configured the settings, click Create addon to provision your database.

Next, go to the Secrets tab and click Create Secret Group. Name it something easy to recognize, such as unleash-secrets. This group will hold all the environment variables required by Unleash. You can find the full list of supported variables in their documentation.

To save time on manually searching and configuring environment variables, you can use these pre-configured options:

UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_USERNAME={enter value}
UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD={enter value}

Notes about these variables:

• UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_USERNAME — your initial dashboard login username
• UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD — your initial dashboard login password

Link the PostgreSQL addon to your secret group

Northflank addons (like PostgreSQL) expose connection details (username, password, etc.). Instead of manually copying these values into your secrets, you can link the addon directly to your secret group. This way, whenever the addon rotates credentials, your service automatically receives the updated values.

• Under the Linked addons section, click "Configure" to map POSTGRES_URI to the alias DATABASE_URL.

Here we're not inventing new values, we're just telling Northflank to feed the Postgres addon's URI into the environment variable your service requires.

Finally, click Create secret group to save everything.

Within your project, navigate to the Services tab in the top menu and click ’Create New Service'. Select Deployment and give your service a name such as unleash-app.

For the deployment source, choose External image and enter the official Unleash Docker image: unleashorg/unleash-server:latest .

Select compute resources

Choose the compute size that best matches your workload:

• Small plans are fine for testing or lightweight usage.
• Larger plans are recommended for production, as Unleash can be resource-intensive under real-world traffic.

The flexibility to adjust resources later means you can start small and scale up as your scheduling needs grow.

Set up a port so your app is accessible:

• Port: 4242
• Protocol: HTTP
• Public access: enable this to let people access your scheduling app from the internet

Northflank will automatically generate a secure, unique public URL for your service. This saves you from having to manage DNS or SSL certificates manually.

Deploy your service

When you’re satisfied with your settings, click "Create service." Northflank will pull the image, provision resources, and deploy Unleash.

Once the deployment is successful, you’ll see your service’s public URL at the top right corner, e.g.: p01--unleash-app--lppg6t2b6kzf.code.run

Deploying Unleash on Northflank is the easiest way to run a modern, open-source feature management platform that is reliable, developer-friendly, and built for performance.

You now have a scalable, secure, and production-ready Unleash environment, with everything you need to manage feature rollouts without worrying about infrastructure.