Dokku Has a Free PaaS — Your Own Heroku in 5 Minutes on a $5 VPS

#deployment #devops #docker #heroku

Dokku is the smallest PaaS implementation — a Heroku-like experience on your own server.

What You Get for Free

Git push deploy — git push dokku main and you're live
Buildpacks — Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java auto-detected
Docker support — deploy any Dockerfile
SSL — automatic Let's Encrypt certificates
Plugins — PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Elasticsearch
Zero-downtime deploys — rolling restarts by default
App scaling — dokku ps:scale app web=2 worker=1
Custom domains — map any domain to any app

Quick Start

# On a fresh Ubuntu VPS ($5/mo DigitalOcean, Hetzner, etc.)
wget -NP . https://dokku.com/install.sh
sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.34.9 bash install.sh

# On your local machine
git remote add dokku dokku@your-server:myapp
git push dokku main

# Add a database
dokku postgres:create mydb
dokku postgres:link mydb myapp

Why Developers Choose It

Heroku killed their free tier. Railway/Render have usage limits. Dokku:

One-time $5/mo for a VPS — run unlimited apps
Heroku buildpacks — most Heroku apps deploy with zero changes
Plugin ecosystem — databases, caching, queues included
Simple CLI — dokku apps:create, dokku domains:add, done

A freelance developer was managing 8 client apps on Heroku at $7/mo each ($56/mo total). Moved everything to Dokku on a $12/mo Hetzner VPS — same git-push workflow, 78% cost savings.