Managed Postgres in jnb (Johannesburg)?

Questions / Help
, ,
1

We run a property-management platform for South African real estate agencies on Fly, with our app in jnb. Fly is one of very few platforms with a Johannesburg presence, which is a big part of why we’re here.

We’re about to provision our production database and MPG is what we want: the data is compliance-sensitive (FICA/POPIAj, South Africa’s KYC and data-protection regimes), so managed backups and point-in-time restore genuinely matter to us. But our users are all in South Africa, so putting the database in fra or lhr isn’t workable for a LiveView app that pays the app↔db round-trip on every query (~150ms+ from jnb).

Right now our realistic options are unmanaged postgres-flex in jnb, or a managed Postgres from another cloud’s Johannesburg region — and we’d much rather stay on Fly for all of it.

Last public word on region expansion was July 2025 (“we don’t have plans to add more regions at the moment, but we will likely do so eventually” — Are more Managed Postgres regions being added?) — but since then ams/nrt/sin/sjc and then lhr/yyz have shipped, so I’m hoping the list has grown.

Is jnb on the MPG rollout list, and is there anything you can share about timing? Even a rough “this year / not this year” would genuinely change how we provision.

4

Thanks for journeying with us at Fly.io! We hear you on your request for MPG presence in JNB. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have plans to open MPG in the JNB region any time this year. I’ll certainly add your vote to the request though!

With that said, kindly note that there are caveats to deploying your own unmanaged postgres to Fly.io( see here: https://fly.io/docs/postgres/getting-started/what-you-should-know/ )–so if you’re looking for a managed solution for your database, deploying to another provider would be the ideal path at this time.

Of course, if you’re more comfortable with a free rein on your database controls and management, Unmanaged Postgres can also be a great option. You can certainly run self-managed Postgres on Fly.io, ( just like any other app! ) provided you’re prepared to handle important, operational responsibilities such as backups, monitoring, configuration tuning, availability, and recovery.