# Development Options

Zuplo offers both a local and web-based development experiences. For most
customers, we recommend the local developer experience as this is the most
flexible and fastest way to work with your Zuplo API and Developer Portal.

## Local Development

The [local experience](./local-development.mdx) allows users to run both the API
Gateway and Dev Portal locally. It also includes a local version of the Route
Designer that's integrated into the Zuplo Portal (portal.zuplo.com). Local
development allows customers to use the IDE of their choice and run everything
locally.

Local development is available for all customers regardless of their deployment
model. It's designed to be fast and lightweight, allowing developers to quickly
iterate on their APIs without needing to deploy to the cloud.

Local development is the fastest way to develop and test your APIs as you can
test changes immediately without waiting for a deployment. Changes to your API
are automatically loaded into the local API Gateway and Dev Portal.

## Web-Based Development Experience

:::note{title="Managed Dedicated"}

Working copy environments aren't available for customers using the
[managed dedicated deployment model](../dedicated/overview.mdx).

:::

The web-based development experience on (portal.zuplo.com) allows customers on
our managed-edge deployment model to make edits to their project right from
within the browser. This experience is designed to be fast and light-weight. The
web-based experience provides each developer their own
[developer environment](./environments.mdx) (called **working copy**)
environment.

The working copy environment is a special environment that's unique to each
developer. It's optimized for development which means it has slightly different
configurations than the standard environments. For example, it doesn't cache
resources as aggressively so changes are reflected more quickly. You can tell if
an environment is a working copy as it will be deployed to the `zuplo.dev`
domain. Working copy environments can't have custom domains.

The working copy environment isn't intended for production use and shouldn't be
used as such. It's designed for development and testing purposes only.