CapRover

CapRover is a free, open-source platform-as-a-service built on Docker that enables developers to deploy applications, databases, and services on their own servers with minimal configuration. The platform provides a web-based dashboard for managing deployments, one-click apps for instantly provisioning popular services like WordPress, Ghost, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and dozens more, automatic HTTPS via Let's Encrypt, built-in container orchestration, and horizontal scaling across multiple servers using Docker Swarm. CapRover supports deployments from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or any Git repository, with automatic Docker image builds or custom Dockerfiles. The Captain Definition file format allows defining build and deployment configuration declaratively, similar to a Procfile or docker-compose.yml. For teams, CapRover provides basic authentication, deployment logs, and container resource management. The platform is designed to work with any VPS provider including DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Linode, and AWS EC2, with an installation script that sets up the entire platform in about 10 minutes on a fresh Ubuntu server. While less feature-rich than Coolify, CapRover has been battle-tested for years and offers a simpler, more lightweight approach to self-hosted PaaS that many developers prefer for its stability and minimal resource footprint on the host server.