Set up Dokploy on Hetzner in your Cloud

· updated · post dokploy cloud n8n

Dokploy

Dokploy is a powerful open-source deployment platform that makes it easy to run and manage projects in your own infrastructure. In this guide, we’ll go through the process of setting up a Dokploy instance on a Hetzner server and deploying your first service from a template (in this case, Plausible Analytics).

This step-by-step tutorial will walk you from bare-metal provisioning all the way to serving your first application on a custom domain.

1. Provision a Hetzner Server

Start by creating a new server (Cloud or Dedicated) on Hetzner Cloud. For this tutorial, a small cloud instance is sufficient (for example, the CX22 plan with 4GB RAM).

Take note of the server’s IP address – we’ll use it later.

2. Generate an SSH Key

On your local machine, create an SSH key pair if you don’t already have one:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/dokploy-key

By default, this generates two files inside ~/.ssh/:

To get your public key, run:

cat ~/.ssh/dokploy-key.pub

When opening the Hetzner server creation page, paste the contents of dokploy-key.pub into the SSH Keys section.

3. Connect to the Server

Open a terminal and log into the server:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/dokploy-key root@<SERVER-IP>

Replace <SERVER-IP> with the Hetzner IP address. If you leave out “~/.ssh/dokploy-key” you will be asked for the password instead of using the SSH key. This password is sent to your email when the server is created.

4. Install Dokploy

Once connected, run the following installation command provided by Dokploy:

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

This will install and start Dokploy on your server.

5. Access the Dokploy Dashboard

After installation, you can access the Dokploy dashboard by visiting:

http://<SERVER-IP>:3000

The dashboard should load, and you’ll be prompted to create your admin account.

6. Configure DNS

To use your own domain, create an A record in your DNS provider’s dashboard that points to the Hetzner server’s IP address.

Example:

@   A   yourdomain.com   <SERVER-IP>

7. Set Domain in Dokploy

Back in the Dokploy dashboard, go to Webserver → Domain and update the domain from the default IP to your actual domain.

8. Deploy a Service from Templates

Dokploy includes a set of pre-built templates for common services.

9. Customize the Service Domain

Once the service is deployed, change its default domain to match your custom domain (for example: analytics.yourdomain.com). You also need to set another A record in your DNS provider for this subdomain.

analytics   A   yourdomain.com   <SERVER-IP>

10. Redeploy the Service

After updating the domain, click Deploy again in the General Tab. Dokploy will restart the service with the new configuration and automatically configure SSL via Let’s Encrypt if you set the HTTPS-Switch to on.

🎉 Success!

You now have:

From here, you can explore more templates, deploy additional services, and manage everything through the Dokploy dashboard. There are a lot of interesting services integrated as templates, such as:

For more information, check out the Dokploy documentation.

Contact me for help or questions: [email protected]