Dokploy Alternatives 2026: 6 Self-Hosted PaaS Compared

The usual reasons to move off Dokploy are three walls in its free edition: identity features such as SSO and audit logs sit behind an Enterprise licence, built-in monitoring stops at resource metrics, and replicating an app across servers means running Docker Swarm with a registry. Dokploy itself is a capable platform, and for many teams the right move is to stay. If one of those walls is the reason you are reading this, the six alternatives below handle it differently, and each brings trade-offs of its own.

TL;DR: Pick Temps if you want error tracking, session replay, web analytics and uptime monitoring in the same self-hosted install, with no Swarm involved. Pick Coolify for the closest like-for-like swap with no paywalled features. Pick Dokku or Kamal if you prefer a command line to a dashboard. CapRover and Easypanel are also Swarm-based, so they suit you only if Swarm isn't why you're leaving.

Dokploy Alternatives at a Glance

Prices verified on October 10, 2026 on each vendor's pricing page; check them before you budget.

Every row is self-hosted at heart: the software is free or nearly free, and the main bill is the servers it runs on.

Why Do Developers Look for Dokploy Alternatives?

Dokploy deploys applications, databases and Docker Compose stacks from one dashboard, builds with Nixpacks, Railpack, Heroku or Paketo buildpacks or a Dockerfile, and backs databases and volumes up to S3. The reasons people leave are narrower than the feature list, and Dokploy's own documentation states each of them.

SSO, custom roles and audit logs need an Enterprise licence

Dokploy's editions table marks SSO (both OIDC and SAML), SCIM provisioning, custom roles, audit logs, application authentication and white-labeling as unavailable in the free self-hosted edition. They come with Enterprise, either self-hosted with a licence key or on Enterprise Cloud, and both are priced by quote. The free edition has basic roles (Owner, Admin, Member).

The licence matches. Dokploy's LICENSE.MD puts the repository under Apache-2.0 except anything in a /proprietary directory, which falls under the Dokploy Source Available License: you may modify that code and use it for development and testing, but production use needs a commercial agreement. In the code today those directories hold SSO, SCIM, audit logs, custom roles, white-labeling and licence-key handling. So "Apache-2.0 except its /proprietary enterprise features" is the accurate summary. Calling the whole project plain Apache-2.0 is wrong, and so is calling the whole project source-available.

For a team that needs OIDC sign-in or an audit trail but can't justify an enterprise contract, that's the first reason to look around.

Monitoring stops at resource metrics

Dokploy shows CPU, memory, storage and network usage per resource, and you can set CPU and memory thresholds that send alerts. Three details matter in practice:

• The editions table lists the self-hosted editions as "Basic monitoring". The advanced monitoring dashboard is part of Dokploy Cloud.
• Metrics are kept for 2 days by default.
• Threshold alerts fire on the server as a whole, "not individual services", in the docs' words.

Nothing in Dokploy's docs covers error tracking, product analytics, session replay or uptime checks. Most production apps add those as separate services, either SaaS subscriptions or more containers to run yourself.

Replicating an app across servers means Docker Swarm

Dokploy offers three deployment options: everything on the Dokploy server, independent remote servers managed over SSH, or Swarm nodes. Only the Swarm option runs replicas of one app across machines. It needs a Docker registry, nodes with the same CPU architecture as the Dokploy server, and storage cleanup you set up yourself, because Dokploy doesn't clean up storage on the extra nodes. Its own comparison rates the setup complexity "High" and recommends scaling the main server vertically first. That's sound advice, but teams who want one app's replicas spread across servers without Swarm have to look elsewhere.

Preview deployments are built around GitHub

Dokploy's preview deployments page describes the feature as "specifically designed for applications with GitHub integration." The page names no other provider, so teams on GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea should check before counting on a deployment per merge request.

None of this makes Dokploy a bad choice. If you want Swarm, already run an observability stack you like, or want a managed control plane today from $4.50 a server, Dokploy remains a good choice. If not, read on.

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Coolify vs Dokploy: Which Self-Hosted PaaS Is Better?

Coolify is the closest match to Dokploy, and the two overlap more than any other pair here. Both are Docker-based, both have a web dashboard, one-click services, Docker Compose deploys, database backups and preview deployments, and both sell a hosted dashboard that deploys to servers you bring. The differences are licensing, multi-server design and what you pay for.

Plans and prices verified on October 10, 2026 on coolify.io/pricing and dokploy.com/pricing.

Pick Coolify over Dokploy if you want every feature in the free edition, including OIDC sign-in, or want the cheaper hosted dashboard as you add servers. Three servers on Coolify Cloud come to $8/month; on Dokploy Cloud they are $13.50 on Hobby or $15 on Startup. Coolify also has the larger community and a traffic analytics view that Dokploy lacks.

Stay with Dokploy over Coolify if you need replicas spread across servers today. Coolify's docs tell you not to create new Swarm deployments, and its replacement, native Compose replicas in v5, has no release date. Dokploy's Heroku and Paketo buildpack support is another difference: Coolify's build packs don't include them.

Neither includes error tracking, session replay or uptime checks.

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1. Temps: Best for Built-In Observability

Temps is a self-hosted deployment platform: one Rust binary you install on your own server next to Docker, with git-push deploys, a built-in Pingora reverse proxy and automatic Let's Encrypt certificates. It replaces seven SaaS tools: Vercel (git-push deployments), PostHog (web analytics and session replay), Sentry (error tracking with a Sentry-compatible DSN), Pingdom (uptime monitoring), Datadog (OpenTelemetry traces, metrics and logs), Resend (transactional email) and E2B (AI agent sandboxes).

Pricing: free to self-host under MIT / Apache 2.0, with unlimited projects and users. A Premium licence ($399 per organisation per month) adds SAML SSO, SCIM, custom roles and deployment approval gates. Temps Cloud, a hosted control plane for servers you own, is coming soon from $29/month.

Against Dokploy's walls: two things Dokploy reserves for Enterprise, OIDC sign-in and an audit log, are in Temps' free binary, along with MFA and team roles (Owner, Admin, Deployer, Viewer). Error tracking, web analytics, session replay and uptime monitors run in the same install, so the observability gap closes without another vendor. More servers join as worker nodes with temps join over a private network you provide (a VPC, a VPN or Tailscale). The control plane spreads an app's replicas across them, with no Swarm involved. Preview deployments work with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket Cloud and Gitea or Forgejo repositories.

From Dokploy specifically: Temps has a Dokploy import wizard. You give it a Dokploy API key, and it discovers applications, databases, environment variables and domains, shows you a plan, and recreates each app as a Temps project. Dokploy keeps serving traffic until you move DNS.

Pros

• Error tracking, session replay, web analytics and uptime monitoring in the binary that deploys your app
• OIDC sign-in, MFA, team roles and an audit log in the free edition
• Multi-node without Docker Swarm
• Managed Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, MariaDB and S3-compatible storage beside your apps
• An import wizard that reads your Dokploy instance directly

Cons

• No one-click template catalogue like Dokploy's; Temps puts its effort into the deploy-and-observe core instead
• App containers have no persistent volumes (use managed Postgres or S3, or a Docker Compose project with named volumes), and there is no pre-deploy command, so migrations run as a one-off step
• In multi-node setups, traffic still enters through the control plane's proxy
• Anonymous telemetry is on by default; set TEMPS_TELEMETRY=0 on the server to turn it off
• No managed control plane you can buy today, where Dokploy Cloud is available now
• Temps is pre-1.0 (v0.1.0 prereleases) with a smaller community than Dokploy. It's newer, which is also why the observability stack older platforms leave to other vendors is built in

Best for: teams leaving Dokploy because they pay separately for error tracking, analytics or replay, or because they want SSO-style sign-in and multi-node without an enterprise contract or Swarm. See Temps vs Dokploy for the full head-to-head.

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2. Coolify: Closest Like-for-Like Swap

Coolify is the largest self-hosted PaaS by community, with 62,000+ GitHub stars and 280+ one-click services. It describes itself as "open source and free forever" with "no paywalled features", and its code is Apache-2.0 throughout.

Pricing: free to self-host. Coolify Cloud hosts the dashboard for $5/month including 2 connected servers, plus $3/month per additional server, with 20% off annually. Your apps run on servers you connect.

Coolify v4.4.x (October 2026) added opt-in, per-server traffic analytics for Traefik and Caddy, and OpenID Connect sign-in. Sentinel, its Rust agent, reports server and container metrics. For multi-server, Coolify deploys to standalone servers over SSH behind an external load balancer. Its Docker Swarm support is "experimental and deprecated" and will be removed in v5.

Pros

• Nothing paywalled in the self-hosted edition, including OIDC sign-in
• The biggest community and a large one-click catalogue
• Cheapest hosted dashboard on this list as you add servers
• Railpack and Nixpacks builds, so many Dokploy apps build without changes

Cons

• No supported way to run replicas across servers until v5, which has no release date
• No built-in error tracking, session replay or uptime checks

Best for: teams who like Dokploy's model but want everything in the free edition. Compare it further in the Coolify alternatives roundup or Temps vs Coolify.

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3. CapRover: Mature and Swarm-Based

CapRover has been around since 2017 and runs on Docker Swarm, nginx, Let's Encrypt and NetData. Apps are configured through its dashboard or a captain-definition file, and its one-click catalogue lists 361 apps.

Pricing: free to self-host. The licence is Apache-2.0 with an appendix: CapRover's paid features can't be modified or redistributed without a written agreement, and modifications of free features must stay open source.

CapRover is actively maintained: v1.15.0 (August 2026) added simplified Docker Compose deploys and made BuildKit the default builder, and v1.15.4 followed on August 30, 2026. Since v1.14.0 it has shipped GoAccess as a built-in statistics engine for access logs, alongside NetData for server metrics.

Pros

• Long track record and a 350+ app catalogue
• Clustering is built in and documented
• Access-log statistics and server metrics out of the box

Cons

• It's Swarm-based, so it doesn't help if Swarm is why you're leaving Dokploy
• Docker Compose support is newer and simplified compared with Dokploy's
• No error tracking, session replay or uptime checks

Best for: teams that want a mature dashboard PaaS and are fine with Swarm. See Temps vs CapRover.

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4. Dokku: Heroku-Style From the Command Line

Dokku is the long-running open-source take on Heroku: git push dokku main, then Dokku builds the app with Heroku buildpacks (herokuish), Cloud Native Buildpacks or a Dockerfile and runs it in a container. It's MIT-licensed, and databases come from plugins such as the official Postgres plugin.

Pricing: free and open source. Dokku Pro, an official web UI from the maintainers, is a one-time $849 licence covering one production server and two pre-production servers.

Dokku is not single-server only. Since 0.33.0 its K3s scheduler adds nodes with dokku scheduler-k3s:cluster:add, and like Dokploy's Swarm mode it needs a Docker registry. Releases are frequent: v0.38.31 shipped on September 27, 2026.

Pros

• Simple, well-documented, with a decade-plus track record
• Heroku buildpack compatibility
• Multi-server via K3s when you need it

Cons

• The open-source edition has no web dashboard
• Databases, backups and extras come from plugins you assemble
• No built-in monitoring, error tracking or analytics

Best for: developers who want the smallest moving part and are at home in a terminal. See Temps vs Dokku.

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5. Kamal: Deploys Over SSH, No Control Plane

Kamal comes from 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY, and describes itself as "Capistrano for Containers". You list servers in config/deploy.yml, and Kamal installs Docker on them over SSH and runs zero-downtime deploys through kamal-proxy. There is no dashboard and no server-side control plane to maintain. It's MIT-licensed.

Pricing: free. You install it as a Ruby gem, or run it in a Docker container if you don't have Ruby.

Databases run as "accessories", which Kamal boots with a separate command and manages apart from the app. They aren't updated by normal deploys or deployed with zero downtime. Automatic Let's Encrypt certificates require deploying to one server; across several hosts you supply your own certificates. The latest release is v2.12.0 (June 18, 2026).

Pros

• Nothing to run on the server besides Docker and your containers
• Multi-host deploys are just a longer host list
• Maintained by 37signals, with releases through 2026

Cons

• No UI, no one-click services, no managed database lifecycle
• Automatic TLS only on single-server deploys
• No monitoring beyond logs from the CLI

Best for: teams who want deployment as a CLI step in their pipeline, especially Rails shops. See Temps vs Kamal.

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6. Easypanel: A Polished Panel With Per-Server Licences

Easypanel is a self-hosted server control panel for apps, databases and Compose stacks. It's a commercial product licensed per server, not open source, and there is no managed cloud version.

Pricing: the free plan covers up to 3 projects with basic monitoring. Paid plans are licensed per server: Hobby $10.90/month billed annually ($14.90 monthly) adds unlimited projects, advanced monitoring, notifications and database backups; Growth $16.90 ($23.90) adds multiple users and access control; Business $29.90 ($37.90) adds cluster support, labelled alpha, and white-labeling.

Easypanel shipped three releases in September 2026 (2.34.0 through 2.36.0), so it's actively developed.

Pros

• A clean UI and one of the largest template catalogues among self-hosted panels
• CPU, memory, disk, network and log views built in
• White-labeling available without an enterprise contract

Cons

• Not open source; features depend on a per-server licence
• Clustering is alpha, on the top plan, and Swarm-based
• No error tracking or session replay, and its docs don't describe per-pull-request preview deployments

Best for: solo developers and agencies who want a polished panel more than an open licence.

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What If You Want to Stop Self-Hosting?

Some teams leave Dokploy because they no longer want to run servers at all. That's a different trade: you swap a flat server bill for a per-service or usage-based one. Render, Railway, Fly.io and DigitalOcean App Platform are the usual destinations, and our Railway alternatives guide compares them on pricing model, free tiers and databases. A middle path is a hosted control plane on your own servers: Dokploy Cloud and Coolify Cloud are available today, and Temps Cloud is coming soon.

How to Choose a Dokploy Alternative

Start from the wall you hit:

• You need SSO or an audit trail without an enterprise contract. Coolify includes OIDC sign-in for free. Temps includes OIDC sign-in, MFA and a searchable audit log for free, with SAML and SCIM in Premium.
• You pay separately for error tracking, analytics, replay or uptime. Temps is the only option here with all four built in.
• You want multi-node without Swarm. Temps (worker nodes), Dokku (K3s) and Kamal (SSH to many hosts) avoid it. CapRover and Easypanel use Swarm too, and Coolify is moving off it but has no replacement for replicas yet.
• You want the same model with nothing paywalled. Coolify.
• You'd rather have no dashboard at all. Dokku or Kamal.
• Your repos are on GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea and you want preview deployments. Temps supports all three alongside GitHub.
• You want a managed control plane today. Stay with Dokploy Cloud, or move to Coolify Cloud.

Moving Off Dokploy

For Temps, the Dokploy migration guide walks through the import wizard: create a Dokploy API key (with rate limiting off), point Temps at your instance, review the plan, and run it. It copies PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB and MongoDB data when the database has an external port set in Dokploy. Redis is created empty, Compose services aren't scanned yet, and volume files need to move to object storage first. Coming from Coolify instead? There's a Coolify import guide too.

For any other target the steps are the same by hand: redeploy the repository, copy environment variables from each Dokploy application, dump each database with docker exec on the Dokploy server and restore it, move volume data, then switch DNS once the new deployment checks out.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best alternative to Dokploy in 2026?

It depends on why you're leaving. For built-in error tracking, session replay, web analytics and uptime monitoring with no Swarm, Temps (free to self-host under MIT / Apache 2.0). For the closest swap with nothing paywalled, Coolify. For a command-line workflow, Dokku or Kamal. CapRover and Easypanel fit if you're happy to stay on Docker Swarm.

Is Dokploy open source?

Mostly. The repository is Apache-2.0 except its /proprietary directories, which hold the enterprise features (SSO, SCIM, audit logs, custom roles, white-labeling) under the Dokploy Source Available License. That code can be modified and used for development and testing, but production use needs a commercial agreement with Dokploy.

How much does Dokploy cost?

Self-hosting the open-source edition is free. Dokploy Cloud's Hobby plan is $4.50/month per server for one user, and Startup starts at $15/month with three servers and unlimited users, then $4.50 per extra server. Annual billing saves 20%. Enterprise, self-hosted or cloud, is priced by quote.

Is Coolify better than Dokploy?

For most single-server and SSH multi-server setups they're close. Coolify has no paywalled features, free OIDC sign-in, a larger community and a cheaper hosted dashboard ($5/month for two servers). Dokploy supports Docker Swarm replicas across servers today, offers Heroku and Paketo buildpacks, and has SAML and SCIM if you buy Enterprise.

Which Dokploy alternatives don't use Docker Swarm?

Temps joins worker nodes to its own control plane, Dokku uses a K3s scheduler, and Kamal deploys over SSH to the hosts you list. Coolify's Swarm support is deprecated and slated for removal in v5. CapRover and Easypanel's cluster mode are both built on Swarm.

Does Dokploy have error tracking or analytics?

No. Dokploy monitors CPU, memory, storage and network per resource, with CPU and memory alert thresholds, but its docs don't cover error tracking, web analytics, session replay or uptime checks. Temps includes all four.

How do I migrate from Dokploy?

To move to Temps, use the import wizard in the Dokploy migration guide: it reads your Dokploy instance through its API and recreates apps, databases, variables and domains. For other platforms, redeploy the repository, copy environment variables, dump and restore each database, move volume files, and switch DNS last.