5-Minute Quickstart

End-to-end, on a fresh Linux VPS with Docker installed and a domain pointing at it.

Caution

Before you start: make sure ports 80 and 443 are open, Docker is installed, and DNS A records for manage.example.com and whoami.example.com point to the box.

1. Install SimpleDeploy.

   Ubuntu / Debian

   curl -fsSL https://vazra.github.io/apt-repo/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/vazra.gpg
   echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vazra.gpg arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://vazra.github.io/apt-repo stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vazra.list
   sudo apt update && sudo apt install simpledeploy

   Docker (any distro)

   sudo mkdir -p /etc/simpledeploy /var/lib/simpledeploy
   curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vazra/simpledeploy/main/deploy/docker-compose.example.yml \
     | sudo tee /etc/simpledeploy/docker-compose.yml

   Uses network_mode: host so Caddy binds 80/443 on the host directly. See Install via Docker.

   Generic Linux

   curl -L https://github.com/vazra/simpledeploy/releases/latest/download/simpledeploy_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
   sudo mv simpledeploy /usr/local/bin/

   macOS (CLI only)

   brew install vazra/tap/simpledeploy

   macOS is for the remote CLI client. Run the server on Linux.

2. Generate the config.

   sudo simpledeploy init --config /etc/simpledeploy/config.yaml
   sudo vim /etc/simpledeploy/config.yaml

   Set three things:

   domain: manage.example.com
   tls:
     mode: auto
     email: you@example.com
   master_secret: "PASTE_RANDOM_STRING_HERE"

   Generate the master secret:

   openssl rand -hex 32

3. Start the server.

   Ubuntu / Debian (.deb)

   sudo systemctl enable --now simpledeploy
   sudo systemctl status simpledeploy

   Docker

   cd /etc/simpledeploy && sudo docker compose up -d
   sudo docker compose logs -f simpledeploy

   Other Linux

   Drop the systemd unit at /etc/systemd/system/simpledeploy.service, then:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo systemctl enable --now simpledeploy

4. Create the admin user.

   Open https://manage.example.com/ in a browser. The setup wizard greets you and asks for a username and password. That account is the first super-admin.

   Prefer the CLI? See Create the admin.

5. Deploy your first app.

   Drop a compose file in /etc/simpledeploy/apps/whoami/docker-compose.yml:

   services:
     web:
       image: traefik/whoami
       ports:
         - "80"
       labels:
         simpledeploy.domain: "whoami.example.com"
         simpledeploy.port: "80"
       restart: unless-stopped

   The reconciler picks it up within a few seconds. Or push it explicitly:

   simpledeploy apply -f docker-compose.yml --name whoami

6. Visit your domain.

   Open https://whoami.example.com/. Caddy provisioned a Let’s Encrypt cert, the reverse proxy is routing, the container is serving. Done.

Next steps

Deploy more apps Multi-service stacks, env vars, port mappings.

Configure backups Postgres, MySQL, Mongo, volume tarballs to S3.

Add alerts CPU, memory, error rate, custom webhooks.

Invite your team Per-app RBAC, API keys for CI.