If you have not heard of CapRover, it is a self-hosted platform-as-a-service designed to simplify deploying containers; that is well and good, and perhaps you will actually use CapRover at some point to deploy something to production. But the real value is using it as a playground.
CapRover offers a list of one-click-apps, and unlike choosing from a selection of one-click-apps from a cloud VPS host, you do not need to provision a new machine for each app you deploy. Deployment is super easy, and if there is not a one-click-app available, you can submit a Dockerfile to create your app.
CapRover also offers ridiculourly easy SSL deployment, so all of your self-hosted one-click-apps can have valid HTTPS certificates with minimal work on your end.
For context, here are some of my favorite one-click-apps available in the main CapRover Repository:
Ackee - a self-hosted, privacy-respecting analytics tool. (An alternative is Plausible, but I have not been able to get the self-hosted version working. If you are willing to pay, their SaaS option is actually pretty good... and I'm not getting paid to say that.)
code-server - VS Code in your browser. There are a couple quirks, but it is super helpful to have an accessible (from any computer with a web browser) IDE. Just try not to let yourself get lost in the weeds of maintaining any weird settings.
Firefly III - personal finance manager. To be honest, I have yet to spend much time figuring this one out, but it seems promising, and it also seems to be the most popular based on online forums.
OnlyOffice - OPENOFFICE in the browser. Fairly similar to Microsoft Word in functionality, but in your browser, and open source (not proprietary through Google).
Overall, there are still more one-click-apps for me to explore. There are also a couple that I have had trouble with... If you want Mastodon, do not host it with CapRover (as of July, 2021).
At the very least, CapRover will offer a little fun. Give it a shot.
Thanks, and you're welcome.
Top comments (2)
Just discovered caprover. For me it's use is when you want to deploy with docker, but the project isn't big enough to warrant AWS.
I've set services in a similar was in the past, manually configuring let's encrypt and nginx. This is a much easier and slicker.
Just set up gotosocial on a server in an hour, without a one click install. It's that easy!
I just dicovered CapRover this week and obsessed.
Thanks for sharing this.