Dokploy
Dokploy markets itself as a self-hosted PaaS. In practice it is mostly a UI for second touch provisioning on hosts you already own. We hold it for greenfield unless hosts are treated as Cattle Not Pets.
Blurb
Simplify Application and Database Deployments
Summary
Why hold: Marketing says PaaS. The real job is second-touch work: ship apps, Compose stacks, TLS, and DBs onto machines that First Touch Provisioning already created. That is useful UI, not a platform that abstracts the host fleet. Without cattle-style host automation, Dokploy encourages pet servers you babysit through a dashboard.
When it might still fit: Lab or single-node experiments. Or an estate where first touch replaces hosts as cattle and Dokploy only handles app deploy on top. Even then, prefer patterns that keep Cattle Not Pets (image rebuild, replace, not SSH snowflakes).
When to skip: New platforms. Prefer Kubernetes or managed PaaS (Netlify and peers) when you want real platform abstraction. The garden already holds Docker Swarm; Dokploy is Swarm-native under the hood.
Key trade-offs:
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| True role | Second-touch control plane (deploy, Traefik, DB backups, roles) on your VMs |
| Not | A PaaS that owns first-touch cattle lifecycle for you |
| Runtime | Docker Swarm based; Compose without K8s |
| Build | Dockerfile, Nixpacks, Heroku Buildpacks, Compose |
| Risk | Dashboard-driven pets; Swarm path vs Kubernetes adopt |
References
Details
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Install | Single-script install on a VPS; Cloud option for hosting the control plane |
| Deploy targets | Same server or remote servers; Swarm for multi-node |
| Templates | One-click open source apps (e.g. Supabase, Cal.com, PocketBase) |
| Monitoring | Real-time CPU, memory, network; notifications on deploy success/fail |
| Positioning | Markets as open source alternative to Vercel, Netlify, and Heroku |
| Peers (not in garden) | Coolify, Dokku, CapRover share the same second-touch shape |