How to install Openship on a Cloud VPS

Openship is a self-hostable deployment platform with built-in CI/CD: you point it at a Git repository and it detects the stack, builds it, provisions databases, domains and SSL, and ships it, an open-source alternative to Heroku and Vercel.

A self-hosted panel gives you full control over your infrastructure, without monthly per-user or per-server subscriptions.

One-click install on cloudlinux.ro

The fastest way: Openship installs automatically at the first boot of a new server.

1. Create a Cloud VPS from the control panel.
2. In the configuration step, pick Openship from the app catalog.
3. Start the server. The install runs in the background for a few minutes and its status shows on the server page.
4. Access details and generated passwords are saved on the server in /root/app-credentials.txt. The app will be available on port 3001.

Manual install on any Ubuntu server

If you prefer doing it yourself, below is the exact script our automatic install runs. Execute it as root on a fresh Ubuntu server (24.04 recommended). It stops at the first error, and when it finishes you will find the access details in /root/app-credentials.txt.

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
apt-get install -y git
IP=$(hostname -I | awk '{print $1}')
AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
INTERNAL_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
DB_PASS=$(openssl rand -base64 24 | tr -dc 'A-Za-z0-9' | cut -c1-20)
git clone https://github.com/oblien/openship.git /opt/openship
cd /opt/openship
cp .env.example .env
sed -i "s|^BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=.*|BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=${AUTH_SECRET}|" .env
sed -i "s|^INTERNAL_TOKEN=.*|INTERNAL_TOKEN=${INTERNAL_TOKEN}|" .env
sed -i "s|^BETTER_AUTH_URL=.*|BETTER_AUTH_URL=http://${IP}:4000|" .env
sed -i "s|^POSTGRES_PASSWORD=.*|POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${DB_PASS}|" .env
sed -i "s|^DATABASE_URL=.*|DATABASE_URL=postgresql://openship:${DB_PASS}@postgres:5432/openship|" .env
sed -i "s|^REDIS_URL=.*|REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379|" .env
docker compose up -d
printf 'Openship: http://%s:3001\nAPI: http://%s:4000\nCreeaza contul de administrator la prima accesare.\nPrima pornire compileaza aplicatiile (build), poate dura cateva minute.\n' "$IP" "$IP" > /root/app-credentials.txt

You can also save this script as a recipe in your account and reuse it on any new server.