How to Self-Host Plane 2026

What Is Plane?

Plane is an open source project management tool designed to feel like Linear — clean, fast, and opinionated. It supports issues, cycles (sprints), modules (epic-like grouping), pages (wiki), and analytics. Unlike Jira, which buries you in configuration, Plane gets out of the way.

Jira Software costs $8.15/seat/month (up to $16.18 for enterprise). Linear starts at $8/seat/month and doesn't have a self-hosted option. Plane is free when self-hosted — just your server costs.

Key features:

Issues with states, priorities, labels, cycles
Cycles (sprint management with burndown)
Modules (feature groupings like Epics)
Pages (wiki/documentation built-in)
Analytics and velocity tracking
GitHub, GitLab, Slack integrations
REST API
OIDC/SAML SSO

Prerequisites

VPS with 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM (Hetzner CX32 ~€5.49/mo works)
Docker + Docker Compose v2+
Domain name + DNS configured
SMTP credentials for email notifications

Deploy Plane with Docker Compose

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/makeplane/plane.git
cd plane/deploy/selfhost

2. Configure Environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

# .env

# Domain
WEB_URL=https://pm.yourdomain.com

# Secret key — generate a strong random string
SECRET_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)

# Database
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-secure-postgres-password

# Redis
REDIS_URL=redis://plane-redis:6379/

# Email
EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend
EMAIL_HOST=smtp.yourdomain.com
EMAIL_HOST_USER=your@email.com
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=your-email-password
EMAIL_PORT=587
EMAIL_USE_TLS=True
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL=noreply@yourdomain.com

# Storage (local by default)
USE_MINIO=1

# Disable analytics/telemetry
POSTHOG_API_KEY=
ANALYTICS_BASE_API=

3. The docker-compose.yaml (Official)

version: "3.8"

networks:
  plane-network:
    driver: bridge

volumes:
  pgdata:
  redisdata:
  uploads:
  minio_data:

services:
  # Backend API
  api:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis
      - minio
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-api.sh

  # Background worker
  worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - api
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-worker.sh

  # Beat scheduler
  beat-worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - api
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-beat.sh

  # Next.js frontend
  web:
    image: makeplane/plane-frontend:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - api

  # Space app (public-facing project pages)
  space:
    image: makeplane/plane-space:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - api

  # Admin panel
  admin:
    image: makeplane/plane-admin:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - api

  # PostgreSQL
  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks: [plane-network]
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: plane
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: plane

  # Redis
  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - redisdata:/data
    networks: [plane-network]

  # MinIO (S3-compatible storage for uploads)
  minio:
    image: minio/minio:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - minio_data:/data
    networks: [plane-network]
    environment:
      MINIO_ROOT_USER: ${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
      MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
    command: server /data --console-address ":9090"

  # Nginx reverse proxy (internal)
  proxy:
    image: makeplane/plane-proxy:stable
    restart: always
    networks: [plane-network]
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - web
      - api
      - space
      - admin

4. Start the Stack

docker compose up -d

# Watch the startup logs
docker compose logs -f api

Wait for the api container to print: Starting development server at http://0.0.0.0:8000/

Configure Caddy Reverse Proxy

# /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

pm.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:80

    # Allow large file uploads
    request_body {
        max_size 25MB
    }
}

systemctl reload caddy

Initial Setup

Visit https://pm.yourdomain.com and complete the setup wizard:

1. Create your admin account (first registration is automatically admin)
2. Create your first workspace (e.g., "Acme Corp")
3. Invite team members
4. Create your first project

Create Admin via CLI (If Email Isn't Working)

docker compose exec api python manage.py createsuperuser

Key Plane Concepts

Understanding Plane's structure before inviting your team:

Workspace
└── Project (one per product/team)
    ├── Issues (tasks, bugs, stories)
    │   ├── States (Todo, In Progress, Done, etc.)
    │   ├── Cycles (sprints — time-boxed iteration)
    │   └── Modules (epics — feature groups)
    └── Pages (wiki — meeting notes, specs)

Import from Jira

# Plane supports CSV import from Jira
# In Jira: Issues → Export → CSV
# In Plane: Settings → Import → Jira CSV

# Or use GitHub Issues import:
# Settings → Import → GitHub Issues

Import from Linear

Linear has an export function (Settings → Export → CSV). Plane's import handles it via the generic CSV importer with field mapping.

Enable GitHub Integration

1. In Plane: Settings → Integrations → GitHub
2. Create a GitHub App in your GitHub org
3. Paste App ID and private key into Plane
4. Install the app on your repositories

Once connected:

Mention closes PROJ-123 in PR descriptions to auto-close issues
Link commits to Plane issues
See PR status directly in issues

Enable SSO (OIDC)

# .env
OIDC_PROVIDER=authentik  # or google, okta, keycloak
SOCIAL_AUTH_GOOGLE_OAUTH2_KEY=your-client-id      # for Google SSO
SOCIAL_AUTH_GOOGLE_OAUTH2_SECRET=your-secret

For Authentik/Keycloak OIDC:

OIDC_PROVIDER=custom
OIDC_CLIENT_ID=plane
OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=your-secret
OIDC_ISSUER_URL=https://auth.yourdomain.com/application/o/plane/

Use S3/MinIO for File Storage

Plane uses MinIO by default (bundled in docker-compose). For production, you can point it at external S3:

# .env
AWS_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret
AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME=plane-uploads
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL=  # leave blank for AWS; set for MinIO/R2/Hetzner

Plane vs Jira vs Linear

Feature	Plane (self-hosted)	Jira	Linear
Price (10 seats)	~$10/mo server	$82/mo	$80/mo
Self-hosted	✅	❌	❌
Speed	✅ Fast	⚠️ Slow	✅ Fast
Setup time	30 min	N/A (cloud)	N/A (cloud)
Cycles (sprints)	✅	✅	✅
Roadmaps	✅	✅	✅
Custom workflows	✅	✅ Advanced	⚠️ Limited
GitHub integration	✅	✅	✅
API	✅ REST	✅ REST	✅
Data ownership	✅ Full	❌	❌

Backup and Restore

#!/bin/bash
# backup-plane.sh
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
BACKUP_DIR="/backups/plane"

mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR

# Database backup
docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U plane plane \
  | gzip > $BACKUP_DIR/db_$DATE.sql.gz

# MinIO data
tar -czf $BACKUP_DIR/uploads_$DATE.tar.gz \
  $(docker volume inspect selfhost_minio_data --format '{{.Mountpoint}}')

# Rotate 14 days
find $BACKUP_DIR -mtime +14 -delete

echo "Plane backup complete: $DATE"

Restore

# Restore database
gunzip < /backups/plane/db_20260101.sql.gz | \
  docker compose exec -T db psql -U plane plane

# Restart to pick up restored state
docker compose restart api worker

Monitoring Plane Health

# Check API health
curl https://pm.yourdomain.com/api/health/

# Watch all service logs
docker compose logs -f --tail=50

# Check resource usage
docker stats --format "table {{.Name}}\t{{.CPUPerc}}\t{{.MemUsage}}"

Troubleshooting

API crashes on startup:

docker compose logs api | grep "Error"
# Usually a database migration issue — run:
docker compose exec api python manage.py migrate

Frontend shows blank page:

docker compose logs web
# Check WEB_URL matches your domain exactly (no trailing slash)

File uploads fail:

docker compose logs minio
# Check MINIO_ROOT_USER and MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD are set in .env

Plane is one of the top open source Jira alternatives on OSSAlt — compare all self-hosted project management tools.

Why Self-Host Plane?

The case for self-hosting Plane 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 Plane 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 Plane, 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 Plane 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 Plane 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 Plane 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 Plane'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 Plane 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 Plane's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Plane'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 Plane'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 Plane'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 plane

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 Plane's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
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 plane. 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 Plane Updated

Plane 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 Plane 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.

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)