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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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CapRover Has a Free Self-Hosted PaaS — Here's How to Use It

#docker #devops #selfhosted #deployment

Heroku's free tier is gone. Railway has limits. CapRover turns any VPS into your own Heroku — free, open-source, with one-click app deployment.

What Is CapRover?

CapRover is a self-hosted Platform-as-a-Service. Install it on any $5/month VPS and get: automatic HTTPS, Docker deployment, one-click apps, and a beautiful dashboard.

Setup (5 Minutes) 

# On your VPS (Ubuntu 20+)
docker run -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 3000:3000 \
  -e ACCEPTED_TERMS=true \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v captain-data:/captain \
  caprover/caprover
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Then visit http://your-server:3000 and follow the setup wizard.

Deploy Your App

Option 1: CLI 

npm install -g caprover
caprover deploy
# Prompts for app name and uploads your code
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Option 2: GitHub Webhook

Push to GitHub → CapRover auto-deploys. Set up in the dashboard.

Option 3: Dockerfile 

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --production
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]
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CapRover detects the Dockerfile and builds automatically.

One-Click Apps (100+)

Deploy popular apps in one click:

  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis
  • CMS: WordPress, Ghost, Strapi
  • Monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Uptime Kuma
  • DevTools: Gitea, Drone CI, n8n
  • Chat: Mattermost, Rocket.Chat

Key Features

  • Automatic HTTPS — Let's Encrypt certificates
  • Custom domains — point DNS and it works
  • Horizontal scaling — add servers to the cluster
  • Persistent storage — Docker volumes managed
  • Environment variables — manage per app
  • Logs — real-time log streaming
  • Rollback — one-click rollback to previous version

Cost Comparison

Platform 3 apps, 2GB RAM Database HTTPS
Heroku $75/month Extra Included
Railway ~$20/month Metered Included
Render $21/month $7+/month Included
CapRover + VPS $5/month Included Included

Scaling 

# Add more servers to your cluster
caprover add-node --ip 1.2.3.4

# Scale an app to 3 instances
# Done in the dashboard — just change the count
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Get Started

Deploying scraping infrastructure? My Apify actors run in the cloud. Self-hosted solutions: spinov001@gmail.com

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