{"slug": "dokku", "name": "Dokku", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 2.923, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-12-10", "latest": "2026-05-01", "why": "A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://dokku.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Dokku"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 750656544, "item_id": 46916034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916034", "by": "pelagicAustral", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now I deploy at my leisure with stuff like Dokku, or Kamal, directly on a 5 bucks VM", "excerpt": "I used to be a fan of Heroku when I started working web apps... The deployments were so easy, but I became numb to the actual task of dealing with the complexities of a deployment, when they killed the free tier I struggled for a while... I work with Rails, and I used to bitch a lot about how hard it was to deploy an app, but in retrospective I kind of thank Salesforce for murdering their own product. Now I deploy at", "context": "Rails developer", "use_case": "deploying Rails apps", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 746756272, "item_id": 46672267, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672267", "by": "mappu", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dokku user for a decade here", "excerpt": "Dokku user for a decade here, congrats on shipping, love to see more self-hosted PaaS options like this. Why are binaries checked into the bin/ directory in the repo? Compared to Dokku, I like how your LE support is builtin instead of a plugin. Is your main www ingress server an nginx that gets externally configured (like Dokku) or are you using net/http or libcaddy directly? Dokku has a history of trying to compete ", "context": "non Heroku/non Ruby developer", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Mist \u2013 a lightweight, self-hosted PaaS"}, {"id": 739500465, "item_id": 46218779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218779", "by": "chasd00", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "excerpt": "I love Let's Encrypt A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting side projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "10 Years of Let's Encrypt"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "pelagicAustral", "context": "Rails developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916034", "date": "2026-02-06"}, {"by": "mappu", "context": "non Heroku/non Ruby developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672267", "date": "2026-01-18"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["self-hosted paas", "deploying rails apps", "hosting", "self-hosted paas deployment", "hosting side projects"], "compared": [{"slug": "heroku", "name": "Heroku", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kamal", "name": "Kamal", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 767602736, "item_id": 47975171, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975171", "by": "josegonzalez", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dokku supports Kubernetes as a scheduler, utilizing k3s in the background.", "excerpt": "Dokku Maintainer here: Dokku supports Kubernetes as a scheduler, utilizing k3s in the background. You don't need to think about Kubernetes other than if you want a custom chart or something on the cluster. There are also plugins available that allow acl-based access, and Dokku Pro supports keys (and folks have built their own alternatives that do similar). That said, disco seems neat. Always love seeing tools in the ", "context": "Dokku maintainer", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973939", "title": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913903", "title": "An Update on Heroku", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796389", "title": "Tuning Semantic Search on Jfmm.net", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669045", "title": "Show HN: Mist \u2013 a lightweight, self-hosted PaaS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208962", "title": "10 Years of Let's Encrypt", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 767584721, "item_id": 47974045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974045", "by": "sharemywin", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Dokku: Great, but locked us to single servers and required managing SSH access for teams.", "excerpt": "you might look at this for feature ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1lutdul/we_built_disco_an_opensource_paas_to_selfhost_web/ tldr; We built an open-source, MIT-licensed PaaS that: Lets you scale beyond a single server. Uses API keys for team access, not SSH keys. Has a simple CLI and web UI without overwhelming configuration. Includes built-in database management (disco postgres create). Is funde", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 750656544, "item_id": 46916034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916034", "by": "pelagicAustral", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now I deploy at my leisure with stuff like Dokku, or Kamal, directly on a 5 bucks VM", "excerpt": "I used to be a fan of Heroku when I started working web apps... The deployments were so easy, but I became numb to the actual task of dealing with the complexities of a deployment, when they killed the free tier I struggled for a while... I work with Rails, and I used to bitch a lot about how hard it was to deploy an app, but in retrospective I kind of thank Salesforce for murdering their own product. Now I deploy at", "context": "Rails developer", "use_case": "deploying Rails apps", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 748851619, "item_id": 46803226, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46803226", "by": "gomoboo", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "easy to run it on my Dokku installation", "excerpt": "I love reading battlefield notes like this for RAG/search systems. Anyone shooting for useful output is going to hit the same pain points but each article like this has a different set of solutions. I\u2019m leaning on OpenAI for my embedding needs but will be trying llama-server in the future. I stuck with Postgres because it was easy to run it on my Dokku installation. Great to know sqlite is an option there too. My cor", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tuning Semantic Search on Jfmm.net"}, {"id": 746756272, "item_id": 46672267, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672267", "by": "mappu", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dokku user for a decade here", "excerpt": "Dokku user for a decade here, congrats on shipping, love to see more self-hosted PaaS options like this. Why are binaries checked into the bin/ directory in the repo? Compared to Dokku, I like how your LE support is builtin instead of a plugin. Is your main www ingress server an nginx that gets externally configured (like Dokku) or are you using net/http or libcaddy directly? Dokku has a history of trying to compete ", "context": "non Heroku/non Ruby developer", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Mist \u2013 a lightweight, self-hosted PaaS"}, {"id": 739500465, "item_id": 46218779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218779", "by": "chasd00", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "excerpt": "I love Let's Encrypt A small VPS + LetsEncrypt + Dokku is a fantastic way to run personal side projects/hustles at minimal cost.", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting side projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "10 Years of Let's Encrypt"}]}