Stop takes an app offline and frees the memory it reserves on your plan. Start brings it back on the release it last ran, and Restart replaces the running app with a fresh copy of the same release. None of the three rebuilds anything; to run new code, deploy.
Owners, admins and members can use these controls. In the projects list, a viewer sees "View only" in their place.
Where the controls are
In the project header, a running project has Restart and Stop, and a stopped or failed one has Start. On a phone they are under More actions.
In the projects list, a stopped project's row has a Start button. A running project's row has a menu with Restart project and Stop project.
While an action is in progress, the status badge says Stopping, Starting or Restarting. If another action is already running on the project, you get "Another project action is already in progress. Showing the live project state instead." and nothing new starts.
Stop
- Click Stop.
- Click Stop project in the dialog, or Keep running to back out.
HCode stops the app and stops routing traffic to it. The project's databases keep running. A stopped project counts 0 toward your plan's memory, so stopping one makes room to start or deploy another (see Usage and limits). HCode never stops or sleeps an app on its own for having no visitors.
What visitors see
While the app isn't running, its generated address answers with a short page and HTTP status 503. The page tells search engines to come back later rather than drop the site.
| Project | Page heading | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Stopped | "This app is stopped" | "Its owner has stopped it. If this is your app, start it from your HCode dashboard." |
| Starting | "This app is starting" | "It should be ready in a moment. This page will refresh by itself." |
| Failed, with no working release | "This app isn't running" | "It has no working version yet. If this is your app, check its latest deployment in your HCode dashboard." |
| Suspended | "This app is unavailable" | "It isn't available right now." |
The starting page reloads itself every 10 seconds. Custom domains don't get these pages: visitors to a custom domain get an error until the app is running again. A background worker has no address, so there is nothing to show.
Start
Click Start. HCode starts the release the project last ran and routes traffic to it once it answers. Start is refused when:
- your plan doesn't have enough memory left for the app, so stop another project or upgrade (see Plans and billing);
- new work is paused because the organisation is over its storage or bandwidth use.
If the start fails, you get "Start failed. Check the logs, then try again." Look in the runtime logs for what the app printed.
Restart
Click Restart on a running project. HCode replaces the running app with a fresh copy of its current release, starting the new copy before the old one stops, so the app stays up.
A restart reads the project's environment variables again, so it is the quickest way to apply a changed variable. Build settings and code changes still need a deploy.
A restart is allowed while new work is paused for storage or bandwidth, because it only re-runs an app that is already running. If it fails, you get "Restart failed. Check the logs, then try again."