Dokku PaaS on Ubuntu 24.04

Dokku is an open-source, self-hosted Platform as a Service. It brings the Heroku workflow to a single server you own: you push your application with git and Dokku builds it, using Cloud Native or Heroku buildpacks, a Dockerfile or a prebuilt image, runs it as a container, and publishes it behind an nginx reverse proxy on its own hostname. This cloudimg image runs Dokku on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with Docker Engine and nginx preinstalled, ready to take a git push the moment it boots.

A single command line manages the whole application lifecycle: create apps, set environment variables and secrets, attach databases and other services through official plugins, scale process types, add your own domains, provision Let's Encrypt TLS, and read logs. It is ideal for side projects, internal tools, review and staging environments, and small production workloads where you want push-to-deploy simplicity without a managed-platform bill.

The image is secure by default and honest about having no credential. Dokku's access model is SSH public keys added to the dokku user for git-push deploys, and this image ships with no deploy key baked in at all, so nothing usable is embedded in it: you add your own key on first use and only your key can deploy. There is no password and no web control panel. On the first boot of every instance a first-boot service resolves the machine's public address and sets Dokku's global application domain, so your first deployed app gets a working hostname with no DNS to configure, and the whole app lifecycle is proven end to end at build time by actually deploying a container and serving it over HTTP.

Dokku is free and open source under the MIT licence, with no per-CPU or per-deployment fee. cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Dokku project. cloudimg provides packaging, a pinned install with Docker and nginx wired together, secure-by-default hardening, security patching of the base image, and 24/7 support with a guaranteed 24-hour response SLA.