Secrets management for startups and small teams

Stop passing .env files around Slack. Encrypt secrets on every device and sync them across your team and environments.

For startups and small teams, Envless is an end-to-end encrypted way to manage environment variables and secrets without standing up infrastructure. Values are encrypted client-side before they reach the server, so the platform stores only ciphertext. You replace shared .env files and Slack messages with versioned, access-controlled secrets that sync across local, staging, production, and CI. The free tier covers a first project with no credit card, and you add roles, environments, and projects as the team grows. Setup is a CLI install and a pull, not a sprint.

Where Startups & small teams secrets get painful

  • .env files get shared over Slack, email, and screenshots, with no record of who holds a copy or when it last changed.
  • A new hire joins and onboarding stalls while someone hunts down the current production keys and pastes them by hand.
  • There is no audit trail, so when a secret leaks or a deploy breaks you can't see what changed, who changed it, or how to roll back.
  • Running Vault or building a homegrown secrets pipeline is overkill for a team of five and pulls focus off the product.

Manage secrets for Startups & small teams with Envless

  1. 1

    Install the CLI and create your first project

    Start on the free tier: one project, one environment, up to 1,000 variables in it, no credit card. Add your variables once and they are encrypted on your device before upload, so the server only ever stores ciphertext. 

    npm i -g @goenvless/cli
envless login
envless init
  2. 2

    Pull secrets instead of sharing files

    Each teammate pulls the latest secrets into their local environment, or wraps a command so values are injected at runtime and never written to a flat .env on disk. 

    envless pull
envless run -- npm run dev
  3. 3

    Give the right people the right access

    Use role-based access control and private products so engineers reach what they need while production keys stay limited. Sign-in is passwordless, so there is no reusable password to leak, and account access alone still reveals no value without the workspace passphrase.

  4. 4

    Track every change with versioning and history

    Every change to every variable is versioned and recorded in that variable's attributed history, and each change can be delivered to your own systems as a signed webhook. When something breaks you can see who changed what and roll back to a known-good version.

  5. 5

    Wire it into CI and your codebase

    Use a Bearer API key against the REST API, or the a typed SDK for TypeScript, Node, Bun, and Deno, plus a REST API for every other language to load secrets in CI and at runtime. One encrypted source of truth keeps local, staging, production, and CI in step, and each run picks up the current values. 

    import '@goenvless/env/register'
import { env } from '@goenvless/env/server'

Startups & small teams secrets FAQ

Common questions about using Envless with this stack.

Yes. The Free plan is $0 with no credit card and covers 1 project, 1 environment, and up to 1,000 variables in it. Dev is $10/mo for 5 projects and 5 environments per project. When you need team-member access and 24/7 support, Team is $20/mo, which raises projects and environments to 1,000 each. Every plan caps a single environment at 1,000 variables, and support can raise that.

No. Variable values are encrypted client-side on your device before they are uploaded, so the server stores only ciphertext and never sees plaintext. Traffic is protected with TLS in transit, and encrypted copies are stored redundantly for durability.

Invite them to the workspace and give them a role, then grant access to any private products they need. They install the CLI, run a pull, and have the current secrets, no copy-pasting keys over chat. Sign-in is passwordless, through an emailed one-time code, a magic link, or Google or GitHub OAuth, so access is tied to a verified identity.

Not yet. The hosted platform is not self-hostable today; it is being explored. Most startups use the hosted dashboard at app.envless.cloud and the REST API at api.envless.cloud.

Get Started

Ship secrets, not chaos.

Start free today and discover why developers trust Envless for end-to-end encrypted, versioned secrets across every environment.