Every self-hosting guide starts the same way: spin up a server, run an install script, and celebrate when you see a login screen. What those guides rarely address is what happens six months later, when your single server is running eight containers, two databases, and a build pipeline that pegs the CPU at 100% every time you push to main. The single point of failure problem isn't theoretical — it's the reason most self-hosted setups eventually get abandoned in favor of expensive managed platforms.

Dokploy changes the calculus. It gives you a Heroku-like deployment experience on your own infrastructure, with Docker Compose support, built-in Traefik reverse proxy, Let's Encrypt SSL, and a clean UI for managing applications and databases. But Dokploy is only as reliable as the server underneath it. This guide walks through installing Dokploy on MassiveGRID infrastructure, from initial server provisioning through your first production deployment, with an emphasis on the decisions that matter for long-term reliability.

Choosing Your Infrastructure Tier

Before touching a terminal, you need to decide which infrastructure tier matches your workload. MassiveGRID offers three distinct options, each with independently scalable resources — meaning you can increase CPU without touching your RAM allocation, or expand storage without upgrading your entire plan:

The key advantage of MassiveGRID's architecture is independent scaling. You start modest — 2 vCPUs, 2GB RAM, 30GB SSD on a Cloud VPS — and scale only the resources that become bottlenecks. If your Docker builds are slow but memory usage is fine, scale CPU independently. If your database is growing but CPU headroom is comfortable, scale just the storage. No migration required, no full-plan upgrade forced on you.

For this tutorial, we'll provision a Cloud VPS and walk through every step from SSH to first deployment.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

MassiveGRID servers ship with a clean OS installation and root access. There's no bloatware, no pre-installed control panels, and no proprietary agents consuming resources in the background. You get a fresh Ubuntu image and full control.

Step-by-Step Installation

1. Connect to Your Server

After provisioning your VPS through the MassiveGRID portal, you'll receive your server's IP address and root credentials. Connect via SSH:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

On first login, you'll be prompted to accept the server's fingerprint. Confirm with yes.

2. Update the System

Always start with a fully updated system. This ensures you have the latest security patches and that package dependencies resolve correctly during Dokploy's installation:

apt update && apt upgrade -y

This typically takes 1-3 minutes depending on the number of pending updates. On a fresh MassiveGRID image, the update count is usually small since images are rebuilt regularly.

3. Configure the Firewall

Ubuntu ships with UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) but it's inactive by default. Configure it before installing Dokploy to ensure you don't accidentally expose services:

# Allow SSH (critical - do this first or you'll lock yourself out)
ufw allow 22/tcp

# Allow HTTP and HTTPS for web traffic
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp

# Allow Dokploy UI (temporary - we'll remove this later)
ufw allow 3000/tcp

# Enable the firewall
ufw enable

# Verify rules
ufw status

You should see all four ports listed as ALLOW. The order matters here — always allow SSH before enabling UFW. If you enable the firewall without an SSH rule, you'll lose access to your server.

4. Install Dokploy

Dokploy provides a single-command installer that handles Docker installation, container setup, and initial configuration:

curl -sSL https://dokploy.com/install.sh | sh

The installer performs the following steps automatically:

  1. Checks system requirements (OS, architecture, available resources)
  2. Installs Docker Engine and Docker Compose if not present
  3. Pulls Dokploy container images
  4. Initializes Docker Swarm mode (required for Dokploy's orchestration)
  5. Starts the Dokploy application stack

Installation takes 2-5 minutes depending on your server's connection speed. When complete, you'll see a message confirming Dokploy is running on port 3000.

5. Initial Admin Setup

Open your browser and navigate to http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:3000. You'll be presented with Dokploy's registration screen. Create your admin account with a strong password — this is the only account that can manage your entire deployment infrastructure.

After registration, you'll land on the Dokploy dashboard. Before deploying anything, complete the next two sections to secure your installation.

DNS and SSL Configuration

Running Dokploy on a raw IP address over HTTP is acceptable for initial setup, but you should never leave it that way. Here's how to configure proper domain access with automatic SSL:

Point Your Domain

In your DNS provider's control panel, create an A record:

Type Name Value TTL
A deploy YOUR_SERVER_IP 300

If you plan to deploy multiple applications, also add a wildcard record: *.deploy.yourdomain.com pointing to the same IP. This allows Dokploy to automatically assign subdomains to each application.

Configure Traefik for HTTPS

Dokploy uses Traefik as its reverse proxy, and it supports automatic SSL via Let's Encrypt out of the box. In the Dokploy dashboard:

  1. Navigate to Settings → Server
  2. Enter your domain (e.g., deploy.yourdomain.com) in the server domain field
  3. Enter your email address for Let's Encrypt certificate notifications
  4. Enable HTTPS — Traefik will automatically obtain and renew certificates

After saving, Dokploy will be accessible at https://deploy.yourdomain.com.

Security Hardening: Close Port 3000

Now that Dokploy is accessible through your domain on port 443, remove the temporary port 3000 rule:

ufw delete allow 3000/tcp
ufw status

This prevents direct access to the Dokploy UI bypassing Traefik's HTTPS. All traffic now flows through the reverse proxy with SSL encryption.

Your First Deployment

With Dokploy installed and secured, let's deploy an application. We'll use a Node.js app from GitHub as the example, but the process is identical for any language or framework that runs in a Docker container.

Create a New Project

In the Dokploy dashboard, click Create Project. Projects are organizational containers — think of them as namespaces that group related applications and databases.

Add an Application

  1. Inside your project, click Create Service → Application
  2. Select GitHub as the source (you can also use GitLab, Bitbucket, or a raw Docker image)
  3. Connect your GitHub account through OAuth or provide a repository URL
  4. Select the repository and branch (typically main or production)
  5. Dokploy will auto-detect Dockerfiles, Nixpacks buildpacks, or Heroku buildpacks

Configure the Domain

In the application's Domains tab, add your application's domain (e.g., app.yourdomain.com). Dokploy will configure Traefik to route traffic and issue an SSL certificate automatically. If you set up the wildcard DNS record earlier, this works immediately without additional DNS changes.

Deploy

Click Deploy. Dokploy clones the repository, builds the Docker image, and starts the container. You can follow the build logs in real time. Subsequent pushes to the configured branch can trigger automatic deployments if you enable the webhook integration.

Database Setup

Most applications need a database. Dokploy manages database instances as first-class services alongside your applications.

Create a PostgreSQL Instance

  1. In your project, click Create Service → Database
  2. Select PostgreSQL (Dokploy also supports MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and Redis)
  3. Set a database name, username, and password
  4. Click Create — Dokploy pulls the official PostgreSQL image and starts a container with persistent volume storage

Connect Your Application

Dokploy provides the internal connection string for the database, which you can add as an environment variable in your application's settings. Since both containers run on the same Docker network, the connection uses internal DNS — no port exposure required:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@your-db-service:5432/dbname

Configure Backups

In the database service settings, navigate to the Backups tab. Dokploy supports scheduled backups to S3-compatible storage. Set a daily backup schedule and configure retention (7-30 days is typical). On MassiveGRID's infrastructure, you also benefit from the underlying storage layer's replication, but application-level backups remain essential for point-in-time recovery and disaster scenarios.

Growing Beyond a Single Server

A single VPS with Dokploy can comfortably serve a surprising amount of traffic. But there are two inflection points where you'll want to upgrade your infrastructure:

When You Need Dedicated Resources

If you're running production workloads and notice build times increasing or response latencies spiking during traffic peaks, the issue is often CPU contention from shared infrastructure. MassiveGRID's Dedicated VPS (VDS) gives you dedicated CPU cores that no other tenant can impact. Your build pipeline runs at full speed regardless of what's happening on adjacent servers.

With MassiveGRID's independent resource scaling, you don't need to migrate or re-provision. Scale CPU cores independently while keeping your current RAM and storage allocations. Your Dokploy installation, applications, and databases remain exactly where they are.

When Downtime Isn't Acceptable

A single server — regardless of how powerful — is still a single point of failure. Hardware failures, kernel updates, and datacenter maintenance all introduce downtime risk. MassiveGRID's Managed Cloud Dedicated Servers eliminate this with automatic failover: if the underlying hardware fails, your workload migrates to healthy nodes automatically. Paired with Ceph distributed storage (3x data replication) and a 100% uptime SLA, this is the tier for applications where downtime means lost revenue.

Dokploy's Docker Swarm support makes multi-node deployments possible at this tier. You can run Swarm manager and worker nodes across multiple Cloud Dedicated Servers for both application-level and infrastructure-level redundancy. For a deeper dive into multi-node Dokploy, see our guide on Dokploy multi-node Docker Swarm deployments.

MassiveGRID for Dokploy

  • Cloud VPS — From $1.99/mo. Shared compute, independently scalable resources. Best for development, staging, and small production apps.
  • Dedicated VPS (VDS) — From $4.99/mo. Dedicated CPU cores, no noisy neighbors. Best for production workloads with consistent build/runtime performance.
  • Managed Cloud Dedicated — Automatic failover, Ceph storage with 3x replication, 100% uptime SLA. Best for business-critical apps and multi-node Swarm deployments.
Explore Dokploy Hosting on MassiveGRID →

What to Do Next

With Dokploy running on a properly configured VPS, you have a production-capable deployment platform. Here are the logical next steps:

The infrastructure underneath your PaaS layer determines its reliability ceiling. Start with a Cloud VPS for development and early production, scale resources independently as your workload grows, and graduate to Cloud Dedicated Servers when uptime becomes non-negotiable. Dokploy handles the deployment abstraction; MassiveGRID handles the infrastructure beneath it.