Self-Hosting Guide: Deploy Plausible Analytics with Docker

Plausible Analytics is a privacy-first, cookie-free Google Analytics alternative. Self-hosting costs ~$5/month on a VPS vs $9-19/month for Plausible Cloud. Here's the complete production setup.

Requirements

• VPS with 1 GB RAM minimum (2 GB recommended)
• Docker and Docker Compose
• Domain name (e.g., analytics.yourdomain.com)
• SMTP service for email reports

Step 1: Server Setup

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y docker.io docker-compose-plugin

# Start Docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker

Step 2: Clone and Configure

git clone https://github.com/plausible/community-edition.git plausible
cd plausible

# Generate secret key
openssl rand -base64 48

# Edit configuration
cp .env.example .env
nano .env

Essential .env settings:

BASE_URL=https://analytics.yourdomain.com
SECRET_KEY_BASE=your-generated-64-char-secret
TOTP_VAULT_KEY=your-generated-32-char-key

# SMTP for email reports
MAILER_EMAIL=analytics@yourdomain.com
SMTP_HOST_ADDR=smtp.resend.com
SMTP_HOST_PORT=587
SMTP_USER_NAME=resend
SMTP_USER_PWD=re_your_api_key
SMTP_HOST_SSL_ENABLED=true

# Optional: Google Search Console integration
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your-google-client-id
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=your-google-secret

# Optional: MaxMind GeoIP (for city-level data)
MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY=your-key
MAXMIND_EDITION=GeoLite2-City

Step 3: Start Plausible

docker compose up -d

Plausible runs on port 8000 by default.

Step 4: Reverse Proxy (Caddy)

# Install Caddy
sudo apt install -y caddy

# /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
analytics.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8000
}

sudo systemctl restart caddy

Caddy auto-provisions SSL via Let's Encrypt.

Step 5: DNS

Add an A record: analytics.yourdomain.com → your server IP

Step 6: Create Account and Add Site

1. Open https://analytics.yourdomain.com
2. Create your admin account
3. Add your website domain
4. Copy the tracking snippet

Step 7: Add Tracking Script

<script defer data-domain="yourdomain.com"
  src="https://analytics.yourdomain.com/js/script.js"></script>

Enhanced tracking (optional):

<!-- Track outbound links + file downloads + tagged events -->
<script defer data-domain="yourdomain.com"
  src="https://analytics.yourdomain.com/js/script.tagged-events.outbound-links.file-downloads.js">
</script>

Step 8: Production Hardening

Backups:

# Backup ClickHouse and PostgreSQL data
docker compose exec plausible_db pg_dump -U postgres plausible > backup.sql
# Or backup the Docker volumes

Updates:

cd plausible
git pull
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Monitoring: Add Uptime Kuma to monitor your Plausible instance.

Resource Usage

Metric	Value
RAM	512 MB – 1 GB
CPU	1 core
Disk	1-5 GB (depends on traffic)
VPS cost	$5-10/month

Recommended VPS Providers

Provider	Spec	Price
Hetzner	2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM	€4.50/month
DigitalOcean	1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM	$6/month
Linode	1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM	$5/month
Vultr	1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM	$5/month

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