How to Self-Host Docmost in 2026: Docker Setup

What Docmost Is

Docmost (19K+ GitHub stars, AGPL-3.0) is an open source collaborative wiki and documentation platform. It provides what Confluence and Notion offer for team knowledge management — without per-user pricing or data leaving your infrastructure.

Core capabilities:

• Real-time collaborative editing (multiple users editing simultaneously)
• Hierarchical page structure (spaces → pages → subpages)
• Rich editor: tables, code blocks, math (LaTeX), diagrams (Mermaid, Draw.io, Excalidraw)
• Comments and @mentions
• Version history with rollback
• Role-based permissions (workspace, space, page level)
• Native Notion and Confluence importers

What makes it stand out: Docmost focuses on doing documentation well, not being a complete app platform. This makes it significantly more approachable than Outline (which is more developer-oriented) or AFFiNE (which tries to be everything).

Server Requirements

Docmost is lightweight compared to Confluence or tools that bundle Elasticsearch.

Minimum

• 1 CPU core
• 2GB RAM
• 10GB storage

Recommended

• 2+ CPU cores
• 4GB RAM
• 20GB+ storage (grows with document attachments)

Recommended Servers (Hetzner)

Use Case	Server	Monthly
Personal / Small team (1-10)	CAX11 (4GB ARM)	$4
Medium team (10-50)	CAX21 (8GB ARM)	$6
Large team (50+)	CPX31 (8GB)	$10

Step 1: Prepare Your Server

# Update system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Install Docker
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

# Verify
docker --version
docker compose version

Step 2: Create Docker Compose Configuration

Create a directory for Docmost:

mkdir -p /opt/docmost && cd /opt/docmost

Create docker-compose.yml:

services:
  docmost:
    image: docmost/docmost:latest
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis
    environment:
      APP_URL: "http://localhost:3000"
      APP_SECRET: "your-long-random-secret-key-here"
      DATABASE_URL: "postgresql://docmost:docmost@db:5432/docmost?schema=public"
      REDIS_URL: "redis://redis:6379"
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - docmost_storage:/app/data/storage

  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: docmost
      POSTGRES_USER: docmost
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: docmost
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:7.2-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - redis_data:/data

volumes:
  docmost_storage:
  db_data:
  redis_data:

Generate a Secure Secret Key

openssl rand -base64 32

Replace "your-long-random-secret-key-here" with the generated key.

Step 3: Configure Environment Variables

For production use, create a .env file instead of embedding secrets in docker-compose.yml:

# Application
APP_URL=https://docs.yourdomain.com
APP_SECRET=generated-secret-key-here

# Database
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://docmost:strongpassword@db:5432/docmost?schema=public
POSTGRES_DB=docmost
POSTGRES_USER=docmost
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=strongpassword

# Redis
REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379

# Email (optional — for invitations and notifications)
MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
SMTP_HOST=smtp.yourprovider.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=your@email.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=yourpassword
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=docs@yourdomain.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME=Docmost

# Storage (optional — for S3-compatible storage)
# STORAGE_DRIVER=s3
# AWS_S3_BUCKET=your-bucket
# AWS_S3_ENDPOINT=https://s3.amazonaws.com
# AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-key
# AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret
# AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

Update docker-compose.yml to use the env file:

services:
  docmost:
    image: docmost/docmost:latest
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - docmost_storage:/app/data/storage

Step 4: Start Docmost

cd /opt/docmost
docker compose up -d

Monitor startup:

docker compose logs -f docmost

Docmost is ready when you see output indicating the application has started. This typically takes 30-60 seconds.

Verify:

docker compose ps
# All containers should show "running"

Step 5: Initial Setup

Navigate to http://your-server-ip:3000

Create Workspace

Docmost's first screen guides you through workspace creation:

1. Create Account: Enter name, email, password (this becomes the admin)
2. Create Workspace: Give your team's workspace a name
3. Invite Members (optional — can be done later)

Create Your First Space

Spaces organize documentation by team or project:

1. Click New Space in the sidebar
2. Name it (Engineering, Marketing, Product, etc.)
3. Set visibility: Public to workspace, or private (invite-only)

Create Pages

Inside a Space:

1. Click New Page or the "+" icon
2. Title your page
3. Start writing in the rich editor

Keyboard shortcuts (familiar from Notion):

• / — Open block menu (insert headings, images, code blocks, tables)
• [[ — Link to another page
• @ — Mention a team member
• **text** — Bold
• --- — Horizontal rule

Step 6: Set Up HTTPS

HTTPS is required for:

• Real-time collaboration to work reliably across browsers
• Secure authentication and session management
• Mobile browser compatibility

Option A: Caddy (Recommended — Handles SSL Automatically)

sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https curl
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install caddy

/etc/caddy/Caddyfile:

docs.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

sudo systemctl restart caddy

Option B: Nginx + Let's Encrypt

sudo apt install -y nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/docmost:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name docs.yourdomain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        client_max_body_size 100M;
    }
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/docmost /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d docs.yourdomain.com

Update APP_URL

After setting up HTTPS, update your .env file:

APP_URL=https://docs.yourdomain.com

Restart Docmost:

docker compose up -d docmost

Step 7: Invite Your Team

Via Email Invitation (Requires SMTP)

1. Settings → Members → Invite Members
2. Enter email addresses (comma-separated for multiple)
3. Select role: Admin, Member, or Guest
4. Invited users receive setup instructions via email

Manual Account Creation (Without SMTP)

If you haven't configured SMTP:

1. Settings → Members → Invite Members
2. Copy the invitation link (shown after submitting email)
3. Share the link directly with team members

Step 8: Migrate from Confluence or Notion

Docmost includes native importers.

Import from Confluence

1. Export from Confluence: Space Settings → Export → HTML format
2. In Docmost: Settings → Import → Import from Confluence
3. Upload the Confluence export ZIP
4. Docmost converts pages and preserves hierarchy

Note: Confluence macro content (e.g., JIRA issue lists, specialized macros) won't transfer — only page content and basic formatting.

Import from Notion

1. Export from Notion: Settings → Workspace → Export all workspace content → HTML format
2. In Docmost: Settings → Import → Import from Notion
3. Upload the Notion export ZIP

Notion exports preserve most content, including tables, code blocks, and page hierarchy.

Manual Migration

For wikis in other formats:

• Copy/paste content into Docmost pages
• Use Docmost's Markdown support: paste Markdown directly into the editor
• Drag-and-drop images during content creation

Step 9: Configure Storage for Production

Default Docmost storage saves uploads locally in the Docker volume. For production, use S3-compatible storage:

Hetzner Object Storage (Cost-Effective)

Hetzner offers S3-compatible object storage at €0.005/GB/month — much cheaper than AWS S3.

STORAGE_DRIVER=s3
AWS_S3_BUCKET=docmost-attachments
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT=https://nbg1.your-objectstorage.com
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-hetzner-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-hetzner-secret-key
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=eu-central-1

AWS S3

STORAGE_DRIVER=s3
AWS_S3_BUCKET=docmost-attachments
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret-key
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

Restart after changing storage settings:

docker compose up -d docmost

Step 10: Backup Strategy

Docmost data lives in PostgreSQL and the storage volume.

Database Backup

# Manual backup
docker exec docmost-db-1 pg_dump -U docmost docmost | gzip > /opt/backups/docmost-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz

# Automated daily backup (add to crontab)
0 3 * * * docker exec docmost-db-1 pg_dump -U docmost docmost | gzip > /opt/backups/docmost-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).sql.gz && find /opt/backups -name "docmost-*.sql.gz" -mtime +7 -delete

Storage Backup

# If using local storage, sync to remote
rsync -avz /var/lib/docker/volumes/docmost_docmost_storage/ user@backup-server:/backups/docmost-storage/

# If using S3, it's handled by AWS/provider redundancy

Updating Docmost

cd /opt/docmost
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Check release notes at github.com/docmost/docmost/releases.

Cost Comparison

Confluence Cloud (Annual, 10 Users)

Plan	Monthly	Annual
Standard	$5.75/user	$690
Premium	$11/user	$1,320

Notion (Annual, 10 Users)

Plan	Monthly	Annual
Plus	$8/user	$960
Business	$15/user	$1,800

Docmost Self-Hosted

Component	Monthly	Annual
Hetzner CAX11 (4GB)	$4	$48
Domain	~$1	~$12
Total	$5	$60

Savings vs Confluence Standard: $630/year for 10 users. Grows linearly with team size — no per-seat billing.

Find More Documentation Tools

Why Self-Host Docmost?

The case for self-hosting Docmost comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Docmost means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Docmost, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Docmost headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Docmost data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Docmost without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Docmost's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Docmost backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Docmost's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Docmost's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Docmost's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Docmost's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f docmost

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Docmost's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

1. Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
2. Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
3. If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
4. If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats docmost. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Docmost Updated

Docmost follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Docmost is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to self-host Docmost?

The primary cost is your server. A Hetzner CAX11 (2 vCPU ARM, 4GB RAM) runs about $5/month — enough for Docmost plus a few companion services. Add a domain ($12/year) and you're under $75/year for a complete self-hosted deployment. Compare that to SaaS pricing that typically starts at $5-15/user/month.

Can I run Docmost alongside other self-hosted services?

Yes. The docker-compose.yml above isolates Docmost on its own named Docker network. As long as your server has sufficient RAM and disk — 4GB RAM and 20GB disk handles most combinations — running multiple self-hosted services on one VPS is practical and common.

How do I migrate Docmost to a new server?

Stop the container, export the Docker volumes, transfer to the new server, restore the volumes, and update your DNS. Most migrations complete in under an hour. Test the restoration before decommissioning the old server.

What happens if Docmost releases a breaking update?

Pin your docker-compose.yml to a specific image tag instead of latest. Subscribe to the GitHub releases page for advance notice. When ready to upgrade, read the release notes, back up first, test on staging, then update production.

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