Blog · Alternatives

Best Dokku alternatives in 2026: self-hosted panels, platforms and managed machines

By the Pethost team · 18 September 2026 · Updated 5 October 2026 · 10 min read

Dokku put Heroku's git push on a server of your own, and now you want a web panel, Docker Compose, or backups you do not make by hand. The best Dokku alternatives in 2026 come in three kinds: a self-hosted PaaS (Coolify, Dokploy, CapRover, Kamal), a platform that prices every service (Heroku, Render, Railway), or a managed machine. Pethost is the third: €9.99 a month for 2 vCPU, 3 GB and 30 GB, with the panel, HTTPS, nightly backups and request logs done.

Why people look for Dokku alternatives in 2026

Dokku calls itself “An open source PAAS alternative to Heroku”: MIT-licensed, on one server, in 1 GB of memory. It is the smallest self-hosted PaaS that still works, built for a terminal person with one server, and it is maintained: v0.38.31 came out on 27 September 2026. People look past it for three reasons.

It is one server, run from the command line

You deploy with git push, and everything else is a command over SSH. The web UI is Dokku Pro, a paid add-on: “$849 for life”, and it “isn't a hosted service”. More than one server means setting up a K3s cluster, with 2 GB of memory on every node.

It reads no Docker Compose file

Dokku builds one app from a Dockerfile or a buildpack, and a database comes from a plugin. The feature request “Docker Compose Support” has been open since 9 April 2022.

Backups, old logs and updates are yours

Dokku's docs say “The backup plugin was deprecated in 0.4.x” and advise a tar of its directories. They add that “logs from previously running deployments are usually not available”. Patching is yours too: six security advisories were published for Dokku in 2026, five of them critical.

What Dokku's official documentation says about deployment

Dokku's page on application deployment puts a Rails app with a Postgres on a server. Its commands, shortened:

# on the Dokku host
dokku apps:create ruby-getting-started
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git
dokku postgres:create railsdatabase
dokku postgres:link railsdatabase ruby-getting-started

# from your local machine
git remote add dokku dokku@dokku.me:ruby-getting-started
git push dokku main

# on the Dokku host, for HTTPS
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
dokku letsencrypt:enable ruby-getting-started
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

That is a whole deployment, and why people like Dokku. Each line is also a thing to keep up: two plugins, a cron job for the certificate, a database with no backup until you schedule one.

The best Dokku alternatives compared: three kinds

Self-hosted PaaS compared: Coolify vs Dokploy vs CapRover vs Kamal

These four are software for a server you keep: as with Dokku, it is yours to rent, update, secure and back up, also when Coolify Cloud ($5 a month) or Dokploy Cloud ($4.50 a server) hosts the panel. The comparison of all five goes deeper.

Coolify: a panel, Compose and many servers

Coolify is built for many servers of any provider under one panel. It “needs 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, and 10 GB disk space to run”, twice Dokku's memory. In 2026, 61 security advisories were published for it, 16 of them critical: see Coolify alternatives.

Dokploy: a panel and Compose, updated by hand

Dokploy runs a Compose file with docker compose. It asks for 2 GB of RAM, and “you update Dokploy manually when new versions are released”. In 2026, 56 advisories were published for it, 33 of them critical: see Dokploy alternatives.

CapRover: a light panel on Docker Swarm

CapRover is a web panel that fits a 1 GB server, as Dokku does, built for scaling one stateless app over several nodes. Its Compose support “is still experimental and does not implement the complete Compose specification”.

Kamal: a deploy command, no panel

Kamal, from 37signals, is the nearest to Dokku in kind: MIT, a command line, no panel. It is built for a team with one main app on several servers, and has no push-to-deploy and no backup command. Its own page says: “You're probably still better off with a fully managed service if basic Linux or Docker is still difficult”.

Managed platforms: Heroku, Render and Railway

Dokku was made as an alternative to Heroku, so Heroku is the same workflow with no server: git push, buildpacks, a Procfile. Every dyno has its price: an always-on one is $7 a month for 0.5 GB. Since 6 February 2026 Heroku is in “a sustaining engineering model”, with fixes and no new features: see Heroku alternatives.

Render prices every service, and Railway meters memory and CPU by the second: the table has the rates. Both are built for what one server does not do: autoscaling on Render, replicas and regions on three continents on Railway. Railway vs Render vs Fly.io pricing has every plan.

Managed machines: Pethost and Sliplane

A managed machine keeps Dokku's shape: one server, as many apps as fit, one price a month, and someone else looks after it. Sliplane is one: €9 a month is 1 vCPU and 1 GB, and the first server that holds 3 GB is €28.80. It is built for more regions, in the US and Singapore, with dedicated CPUs and a managed PostgreSQL.

Pethost is ours: we rent you a virtual machine in the EU that only your account uses. A project is a Docker Compose file, run as written, so the Postgres that was a Dokku plugin is one more service in the file, in the nightly backup. Every push to GitHub deploys itself. There is no free tier, and SSH goes into your containers, not onto the machine.

Dokku, CapRover and Kamal have no official MCP server that we found. Coolify's has about 45 tools by our count, and none creates an app; Dokploy's mirrors its API in 508. Ours has 13, made for an AI coding agent:

What Dokku alternatives cost for three apps, a worker and a Postgres

One workload on every managed host: three always-on web services of 512 MB each, a worker, a Postgres and 10 GB of traffic a month. It fills about 2.5 GB of Starter's 3 GB.

Railway's figure counts memory only, on our assumption of 0.5 GB a service: each 0.1 vCPU a service uses adds $2. Postgres on Pethost is a container in your project, in the nightly backup: not a managed database with replicas or point-in-time recovery. A self-hosted tool is not in the chart: its price is the server's, given below.

What €9.99 a month buys, with Dokku's chores done

€9.99 a month, without VAT, is a machine of 2 vCPU, 3 GB and 30 GB with the whole right-hand column on it. The same 3 GB of always-on memory are six Basic dynos on Heroku, $42 a month; $39 on Render; $30 on Railway before any CPU; €28.80 on Sliplane. That is the best value among the Dokku alternatives we read: the most memory for the money, with the chores done.

What if I just rent a VPS for Dokku or Coolify?

You can: Dokku runs on a server of 1 GB. But an AI agent on a bare server works as root over SSH: nothing tells it what runs there, and a wrong command takes down the proxy, a database or the firewall. On Pethost it works through 13 tools, and its shell is inside a project's containers, never on the machine.

And a server is not sure to cost less. Hetzner is the one guides and AI assistants name first, at prices it no longer has: it raised them on 1 April and again on 15 June 2026, and its cheap Cost-Optimized range has long been out of stock. Those servers are hardware it bought at good prices, before the RAM shortage, and on 5 October every plan of the range was marked “not available”. The 2 vCPU, 4 GB server it does sell, CPX22, is €19.49 a month (€7.99 before 15 June), and €23.89 with an IPv4 address and Hetzner's backups. Starter is €9.99 with the panel, the backups and the updates done.

Who Pethost is for

Read from each vendor's own documentation and pricing page on 5 October 2026. Prices are as each vendor lists them, in its currency; ours are without VAT.

1. Dokku: deployment
2. Dokku: installation
3. Dokku: backups
4. Dokku: logs
5. Dokku Pro
6. Dokku: “Docker Compose Support”
7. Dokku: advisories
8. Coolify: installation
9. Coolify: MCP
10. Coolify: advisories
11. Coolify: pricing
12. Dokploy: editions
13. Dokploy: MCP
14. Dokploy: advisories
15. Dokploy: pricing
16. CapRover: Docker Compose
17. CapRover: backups
18. Kamal
19. Heroku: pricing
20. Heroku: an update
21. Render: pricing
22. Railway: pricing
23. Sliplane: pricing
24. Hetzner: Cost-Optimized
25. Hetzner: price adjustment