Deploy Etherpad on Pethost in one click

What happens

1. You sign in to Pethost or make an account, with a passkey, GitHub or Google.
2. No machine yet? You pick a plan, and we prepare one for you. The link waits in your browser until it is ready.
3. New project opens at the app. You fill in what it asks for and click Create project: Admin password.
4. In a minute or two the app is live at its own address with HTTPS. Its secrets are made for it at random, and its data is in the nightly backup.
5. It is a project like any other: its compose.yaml, its .env, its logs and a terminal are in the panel, and your agent can change it, roll it back or restore it.

First steps

Open the address, name a pad and share its link. Anyone with the address can create and edit pads. The admin pages are at https://etherpad.sam.pethost.app/admin: sign in as admin with the admin password you gave to install plugins and manage pads.

What it runs

The template is this compose.yaml and the variables it writes into the project’s .env. Pethost runs the file as it is written.

services:
  etherpad:
    image: etherpad/etherpad:3.3.8
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      NODE_ENV: production
      # The user admin signs in to /admin with this password.
      ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${ADMIN_PASSWORD}
      DB_TYPE: postgres
      DB_HOST: postgres
      DB_PORT: "5432"
      DB_NAME: etherpad
      DB_USER: etherpad
      DB_PASS: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
      # Pethost's proxy terminates HTTPS, so the forwarded headers are trusted.
      TRUST_PROXY: "true"
    volumes:
      - plugins:/opt/etherpad-lite/src/plugin_packages
      - var:/opt/etherpad-lite/var
    depends_on:
      postgres:
        condition: service_healthy

  postgres:
    image: postgres:18-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: etherpad
      POSTGRES_USER: etherpad
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -h 127.0.0.1 -U etherpad -d etherpad"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 10
      start_period: 30s

volumes:
  plugins:
  var:
  db:

compose.yamlSee it on GitHub