{"slug": "kamal", "name": "Kamal", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 1.275, "rising": -0.33, "first": "2026-01-31", "latest": "2026-05-01", "why": "Now I deploy at my leisure with stuff like Dokku, or Kamal, directly on a 5 bucks VM", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Now I deploy at my leisure with stuff like Dokku, or Kamal, directly on a 5 bucks VM", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Kamal"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 750656545, "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"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "pelagicAustral", "context": "Rails developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916034", "date": "2026-02-06"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["deployment", "deploying rails apps", "deploying containerized apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "heroku", "name": "Heroku", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "dokku", "name": "Dokku", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973939", "title": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913903", "title": "An Update on Heroku", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46840178", "title": "Show HN: Minimal \u2013 Open-Source Community driven Hardened Container Images", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"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": 767584723, "item_id": 47974045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974045", "by": "sharemywin", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Kamal: Brilliant for deployment, but we wanted integrated database management and other platform features built-in.", "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": "deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 750656545, "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": 749458720, "item_id": 46841170, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46841170", "by": "adriand", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use kamal to deploy containerized applications.", "excerpt": "Dumb question but how would these work in practice? I use kamal to deploy containerized applications. Would I on a regular basis update the versions of the underlying images to match the latest hardened container and then redeploy? I assume this is automatable?", "context": "", "use_case": "deploying containerized apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Minimal \u2013 Open-Source Community driven Hardened Container Images"}]}