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Avaloi

Premium staging environments

Premium staging runs a full copy of your site with half of live's PHP power, for busy sites such as online stores. Your plan's slots come first. If none is free, creating one buys a slot for 20 USD a month.

A premium staging environment is a staging copy that is sized like your live site, only smaller. Use it to test a busy site, such as an online store, where a standard staging environment (2 PHP threads and a 512 MB PHP pool) is too small to show real behavior.

What it runs

  • PHP power. Half of live's PHP threads and half of live's PHP memory pool, rounded down. A site with 6 threads on live gets 3 on a premium environment.
  • One CPU core at most, at a lower priority than live. A premium environment sits on the same server as your live site and never takes CPU from it.
  • A full copy of the data. Premium staging clones the database and the uploads of the environment you pick. Pick live as the environment to clone when you want live's data, or staging for staging's.
  • Git mode by default, like every new environment, and its own temporary address that search engines cannot index.

A site can have up to 5 premium environments. They are counted apart from the 10 standard staging and multidev environments.

Slots and price

Every premium environment uses one premium slot. Your plan includes some, and you can buy more:

Plan Included slots
Starter 0
Pro 1
Business 1 2
Business 2 3
Business 3, Agency, Enterprise 5

Slots belong to your company, not to one site. Avaloi uses the slots your plan includes first. A slot you bought costs 20 USD a month.

Buying a slot

You buy a slot by creating the premium environment. There is no separate checkout.

  1. Open the site, choose Add-ons, and click Create new environment on the Premium staging card. You can also open the environment switcher and choose Create environment, then pick Premium environment.
  2. Name the environment and pick the environment to clone.
  3. If your plan has a free slot, the dialog says so and nothing is charged. If none is free, the dialog shows the monthly price and the amount charged today, which is the rest of this billing period, prorated by the day. Both go on your next invoice. After that, the monthly price bills with your plan.
  4. Click Buy a slot and create environment. That click is your approval.

A purchase needs a saved card. Without one, the dialog says so and links to Payment methods, and nothing is created. Only owners, admins, and billing users can buy a slot. A developer who needs one asks an owner, an admin, or a billing user to create the environment.

If the environment cannot be made, for example when the server has no room, Avaloi ends the slot again and credits the unused days, so you do not pay for nothing.

A bought slot stays until you remove it

Deleting a premium environment frees its slot but does not remove it. The slot keeps billing monthly, so the next premium environment you create uses it at no extra charge. The delete dialog and the Add-ons card both say so.

To stop paying for a slot, open Add-ons and click Remove a slot on the Premium staging card. The slot ends now, and the unused days of this month are credited to your account. You can only remove a slot while one is free. If every slot is in use, delete a premium environment first.

The card shows how many slots your plan includes, how many you bought, how many are in use, how many are free, and which environment uses which slot.

API and assistants

  • Read the slots, the price of the next one, and the prorated amount with GET /v1/sites/{id}/add-ons. The premium_staging entry has a premium object. When purchase_needed is true, the next premium environment buys a slot.
  • Create the environment with POST /v1/sites/{id}/environments and {"kind": "premium_staging", "name": "qa"}. When no slot is free, the call answers 409 with the code premium_charge_confirmation_required, the monthly_cents and the prorated_cents, and buys nothing. Send the same call again with "confirm_premium_charge": true after the customer agrees. Without a saved card the answer is 402 with the code payment_method_required. An API key needs the sites:write and billing:write scopes to buy a slot.
  • Remove one bought slot with POST /v1/sites/{id}/add-ons/{addon_id}/cancel with premium_staging as the add-on.
  • Assistants use the MCP tools create_environment (with confirm and confirm_premium_charge), list_site_add_ons, and disable_add_on with premium_staging. Both flags need the user's approval, and the tool shows the monthly price and the prorated amount first.

Quick answers

Why did Avaloi not charge me for my first premium environment on Pro? Pro includes one premium slot. Avaloi uses included slots first.

I deleted my premium environment. Why am I still billed? You bought the slot, and a slot stays until you remove it. Open Add-ons and click Remove a slot.

Does a premium environment slow my live site? No. It is capped at one CPU core, runs at a lower CPU priority than live, and has a memory limit of its own.

Can I get a premium environment on a test site? Test sites are free and never buy add-ons. A premium environment on a test site costs nothing and does not use one of your company's slots.

Still stuck?

Email [email protected] with your site name and what you tried, or send us a message.