So what is Dokku, another bit, another TL;DR;

Let's jump into it.

You might know Heroku, (my opinion) the greatest platform to ever make it easy to deploy server and client-side applications so fast and easy.

Well Heroku is a business and they have to make their money, so it has a pricing plan, and the free tier can only get so far.

So what if..., this is about to blow your mind. .

You can have your own Heroku-ish, host as many applications as you want(might dent your wallet), set your own rules, and still keep the Heroku's simplicity on deployments.

Its Dokku 🙌

I mean when I discovered Dokku man, been using it ever since -> I frigging love it. Everything basic feature that Heroku offers Dokku offers and its free to host your own Dokku(it's Open-source).

Okay I know if the deal is too good think twice.

So let's jump into the pros and cons of Dokku.

Pros

1. Allow deployment of apps faster and easier just like Heroku

2. Allows installation of plugins such as Postgres/MongoDB and more

3. Allocate certificate with Let's encrypt for free using their plugin

4. No learning curve if you worked with Heroku CLI

5. It's cheaper to run Dokku than pay for Dyno hours.

6. Your apps aren't shutdown on inactivity

Cons

1. Well, it's all CLI not UI(Heroku kills it here), there are tools that give dokku a UI, will list them in the future.

2. Cloud version control integrations like Github/BitBucket.

3. Review app -> Heroku allows branch deploys, Dokku doesn't do that out of the box.

4. Having your apps run on Heroku lets you worry about other things other than maintaining a server.

Conclusion

• If you want to setup Dokku to your web service here