How can we improve the Self-Hosting experience?

Self-host Installation
1

We’re constantly working to make Penpot better for everyone, and right now, we’re focusing on improving the self-host experience. Whether you’re a seasoned pro at hosting Penpot or just starting out, we want to hear from you!

Here’s what we’re looking for:

  • Feedback on the self-hosting process: What worked? What didn’t?

  • Your challenges and solutions: Got stuck somewhere? Found a workaround? Share your experience!

  • Ideas to simplify self-hosting: What could make it easier or more intuitive for you?

Note: At the moment, we’re not seeking product feature suggestions. This is all about enhancing the self-hosting journey.

Your insights will help us make self-hosting Penpot smoother and more accessible for everyone. Drop your thoughts in the comments below, or feel free to reach out to us directly.

3 Likes
2

There is a serious lack of a .deb installation package for Linux systems.

1 Like
3

Personally I would love to see an official Podman guide.

I am selfhosting Penpot for a while with Podman and the help of the community guide and it works flawlessly so far.

Another thing which could help might be offering quick setup with services like PikaPods.

1 Like
4

I would love to see more documentation available regarding reverse proxy configuration for Nginx, Traefik, Caddy, etc.

3 Likes
5

I also think more documentation = more better

I was trying to test the new rendering engine recently and just couldn’t figure out how and where to set the correct flag for that

6

There’s Penpot support in Coolify but it’s had some issues lately. Would be cool if Penpot supported it directly.

7

Well, plugins dont work with docker image. Other plugins (like stock photos) dont work none in cloud or self hosted. :pensive_face:

8

Hello,

My users are happy that the docker self-host seems very stable, so as an admin, I would like to thank you for that.

Like others says, more admin documentation would be great.
For example I had to manage different case by myself like a credential migration from internal to ldap. With a little reflexion it was not so hard (add ldap connection to the local one and invite all my ldap account to the projects with the same roles as the local one, delete the local account and finally remove local connection).

I have 3 environment (qualification, preproduction and production), I would like to export data from prod to the other 2 platform, but it’s not really easy, everytime I have to copy my virtual disk from one to another, I have not found better ways to do that for now, with other way, I have many errors when I start the app.

It seems that we cannot install plugins if we are not connected to Internet, it’s a little bit frustrated for my users because our penpot is not on an Internet environment. It would be great if we can download the plugin and install it on our Penpot.

9

Improved backup experience and management instead of scripting our own tools to enter a Docker container and save its contents.

10

Hello @vvoisin we are glad to hear that you’re happy with our self-host. I will forward your suggestion to the team.

The plugin’s code should be served on a public URL on the internal network. This means that you can put the plugins under the /js directory on the container and serve it together with Penpot, but just placing it there is not enough. You still need to install the plugin pointing to the final url you use for your Penpot instance.