---
title: Deployment with Rclone
linktitle: Deployment with Rclone
description: If you have access to your web host with SFTP/FTP/SSH/HTTP(DAV), you can use rclone to incrementally deploy your entire Hugo website.
date: 2021-08-09
publishdate: 2021-08-09
lastmod: 2021-08-09
categories: [hosting and deployment]
keywords: [rclone,sftp,deployment]
authors: [Daniel F. Dickinson]
menu:
  docs:
    parent: "hosting-and-deployment"
    weight: 80
weight: 80
sections_weight: 80
draft: false
aliases: [/tutorials/deployment-with-rclone/]
toc: true
notesforauthors:
---

## Assumptions

* A web host running a web server. This could be a shared hosting environment or a VPS.
* Access to your web host with any of the [protocols supported by rclone](https://rclone.org/#providers), such as SFTP.
* A functional static website built with Hugo
* Deploying from an [Rclone](https://rclone.org) compatible operating system
* You have [installed Rclone](https://rclone.org/install/).

**NB**: You can remove ``--interactive`` in the commands below once you are comfortable with rclone, if you wish. Also, ``--gc`` and ``--minify`` are optional in the ``hugo`` commands below.

## Getting Started

The spoiler is that you can even deploy your entire website from any compatible OS with no configuration. Using SFTP for example:

```
hugo --gc --minify
rclone sync --interactive --sftp-host sftp.example.com --sftp-user www-data --sftp-ask-password public/ :sftp:www/
```

## Configure Rclone for Even Easier Usage

The easiest way is simply to run ``rclone config``.

The [Rclone docs](https://rclone.org/docs/) provide [an example of configuring Rclone to use SFTP](https://rclone.org/sftp/).

For the next commands, we will assume you configured a remote you named ``hugo-www``

The above 'spoiler' commands could become:

```
hugo --gc --minify
rclone sync --interactive public/ hugo-www:www/
```

After you issue the above commands (and respond to any prompts), check your website and you will see that it is deployed.