ZaneOps

What ZaneOps does

ZaneOps is a self-hosted platform for running static sites, web apps, databases, background workers and complete Docker Compose stacks on your own server. Every service becomes a Docker Swarm service, and Caddy sits in front as the single entry point for HTTP traffic, routing domains and obtaining TLS certificates. The project calls itself an open source alternative to Heroku, Railway and Render.

Services can be deployed from a Docker image or from a Git repository connected through a GitHub or GitLab app. For Git services, ZaneOps builds with Nixpacks, Railpack, a Dockerfile, or a static-directory builder for sites that only need their files served. A push to the tracked branch can trigger a new deployment, and a deploy starts the new version before stopping the old one. Changes to a service are staged first, so you can review them before deploying. Compose stacks can be created from your own file, from a library of templates such as Postgres, Redis and WordPress, or, experimentally, by converting a Dokploy template.

Previews and environments

Preview environments can be created automatically from GitHub or GitLab pull requests, or on demand through the API, using preview templates that decide which services are copied. Projects can hold several environments, such as staging and production, and a new environment can be cloned from an existing one. Environment variables can be imported from and exported to .env files.

ZaneOps stands out for its built-in observability: it records the HTTP requests made to each service and shows runtime logs, metrics and health checks per deployment. Logs are collected by Fluentd and stored in Grafana Loki.

Self-hosting ZaneOps

The install script sets up a Docker Swarm and deploys ZaneOps’ own stack: the Django application and its workers, PostgreSQL, Valkey, the Temporal task queue, Fluentd, Loki and the Caddy proxy. The documentation recommends 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM and at least 30 GB of free disk, with Docker 27.0.3 or later, and lists Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat-based distributions, 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS, Alpine, NixOS, Arch Linux and Apple silicon Macs as tested. It also warns that builds can use all of the server’s resources. The installation guide describes a single server and does not cover adding more.

The instance sends an anonymous ping to the project’s CDN at most every 30 minutes, with the IP address hashed; setting TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false turns it off.

Licensing and paid features

The default image is entirely MIT-licensed and contains no licensing code. A separate Enterprise image adds code from ee/ directories, which is under a commercial license. Since version 1.14, an instance without a license is limited to one workspace and three users (members plus pending invitations); a paid license unlocks more of both. Projects, services, deployments and preview environments are not limited.

Hosted version

No hosted service is offered. The paid license applies to self-hosted instances.

Limitations

The three-user limit of the free tier matters for teams. ZaneOps’ own stack is heavier than that of tools like Dokku, and there is no documented multi-server setup. There are no serverless functions or global edge network, as there are on Vercel or Netlify. The project website was unreachable when we checked, so this review relies on the official documentation repository.

Who it suits

ZaneOps suits solo developers and small teams who want a polished dashboard, preview environments for GitHub or GitLab, and request logs on one server. Teams that need more users without a license, or several servers, should compare Coolify and Dokploy.