Show HN: DockerHoster – Self-hosted alternative to Vercel with auto-deployments

Description and use

DockerHoster lets you host 20+ sites on a single $12/month VPS with automated GitHub deployments, supporting databases, cronjobs, and long-running processes—features lacking in serverless platforms.

Problem

The author needed a self-hosted solution that offered Vercel-like push-to-deploy simplicity while supporting databases, cronjobs, and long-running processes that serverless platforms limit.

Outcome

DockerHoster enables hosting 20+ sites on a single 2GB RAM DigitalOcean droplet with automated GitHub deployments, full Docker ecosystem access, and no serverless limitations.

Workflow

• 1. Deploy DockerHoster on a VPS. 2. Configure nginx-proxy with VIRTUAL_HOST for each site. 3. Add a GitHub Actions workflow and docker-compose.yml to each project. 4. Push code to GitHub. 5. DockerHoster automatically builds and deploys the container.
• 6. Use Cloudflare for DNS, SSL, DDoS protection, and WAF.
• 7. Manage all services via a single docker-compose.yml for complex projects.

Evidence

I built DockerHoster after getting tired of paying per-project hosting fees.

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It’s a one-command setup that lets you host 20+ websites on a single $12/month VPS with automated GitHub deployments.

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The problem: I wanted the simplicity of Vercel’s "push to deploy" workflow but needed to run databases, cronjobs, and long-running processes that serverless platforms don’t support well.

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DockerHoster uses nginx-proxy to automatically route traffic to Docker containers based on VIRTUAL_HOST.

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You just copy a GitHub Actions workflow and docker-compose.yml to any project, and it deploys automatically on push.

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Works with any language/framework (Next.js, Python, Rails, Go, etc.)

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Full Docker ecosystem access (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, AI vector DBs, etc.)

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Tested running 20+ sites on a 2GB RAM DigitalOcean droplet

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