You will get familiar with Voltage.cloud as the hosting provider, learn about the first steps of using your BTCPay Server, and learn how to use the Lightning Network. After we have gone through all the steps, you can run a webshop or crowdfund platform accepting Bitcoin!

This is one of many ways to deploy BTCPay Server. Read our documentation for more details. https://docs.btcpayserver.org.

First, go to the website Voltage.cloud and sign up for a new account. When creating an account, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial. Either click on the Sign Up top right or use the "Try a free 7-day trial" on their homepage.

After you have made an account, click the NODES button on your dashboard. Once we have selected Nodes and created a new node, we get presented with the possible node’s Voltage offers. As this guide will also cover the Lightning Network, at Voltage, we first need to choose our Lightning implementation before creating a BTCPay Server. Click on LightningNode.

Here, you will have to select what kind of Lightning node you want. Voltage has a variety of options for your lighting setup. This is different when deploying with, for example, LunaNode. For the intent of this guide, a Lite Node will suffice. Read more on the differences in Voltage.cloud.

Give your node a Name, set a password, and secure this password. If this password gets lost, you lose access to your backups, and Voltage cannot recover it. Create the node, and Voltage shows you the progress. Voltage has created your Lightning Node. We can now create the BTCPay Server instance and directly access the Lightning Network.

Click on Nodes in the top left of your dashboard. Here you can set up the next portion of your BTCPay Server instance. Click "create new" once you are in the nodes overview. You get a similar screen as before. Now, instead of Lightning Node, we choose BTCPay Server.

Voltage shows you the geolocation of your BTCPay Server, which is hosted in the US West region. Here you will also see the cost of hosting the server. Click Create and give your BTCPay Server a name. Enable Lightning and Voltage shows you the Lightning node created in the previous step. Click Create, and Voltage will create a BTCPay Server instance.

After you hit create, Voltage presents you with the default username and password. These are similar to your previous set password in Voltage. Click the Login to Account button to redirect you to your BTCPay Server.

Welcome to your new BTCPay Server instance. As we have already set up Lightning in the creation process, it shows you Lightning is enabled already!

In this chapter, you learned:

What are some key differences between the Voltage and LunaNode setups?