Before you start

Plausible is a cookieless, privacy-first analytics tool — one dashboard, one 1 KB script tag, no consent banner needed. This guide deploys the fully open-source Community Edition (v2.1+) with Postgres and ClickHouse behind Caddy for TLS. Roughly one hour end-to-end.

You'll need:

A domain (e.g. analytics.yourcompany.com) with DNS pointing to your server.
An SMTP account (Postmark, Resend, SES) or Postmark free tier for verification emails.

Step 1 · Provision the server (5 min)

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP
adduser deploy && usermod -aG sudo deploy
rsync --archive --chown=deploy:deploy ~/.ssh /home/deploy
sed -i 's/^#\?PasswordAuthentication.*/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
systemctl restart ssh

Step 2 · DNS (5 min)

analytics.yourcompany.com → YOUR_SERVER_IP

Step 3 · Install Docker (5 min)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

Step 4 · Clone the community setup (10 min)

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/plausible/community-edition.git plausible
cd plausible
mkdir -p caddy_data caddy_config

Edit plausible-conf.env:

BASE_URL=https://analytics.yourcompany.com
SECRET_KEY_BASE=RANDOM_64_CHAR_STRING
TOTP_VAULT_KEY=BASE64_URL_SAFE_32_BYTES
[email protected]
SMTP_HOST_ADDR=smtp.postmarkapp.com
SMTP_HOST_PORT=587
SMTP_USER_NAME=YOUR_POSTMARK_TOKEN
SMTP_USER_PWD=YOUR_POSTMARK_TOKEN
DISABLE_REGISTRATION=invite_only

Generate secrets:

openssl rand -base64 48   # SECRET_KEY_BASE
openssl rand -base64 32 | tr '+/' '-_'   # TOTP_VAULT_KEY

Step 5 · Add Caddy for TLS (10 min)

The default community-edition compose exposes Plausible on port 8000. Add a Caddy service for automatic HTTPS. Create compose.override.yml:

services:
  caddy:
    image: caddy:2-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile:ro
      - ./caddy_data:/data
      - ./caddy_config:/config
    depends_on:
      - plausible

  plausible:
    ports: []

~/plausible/Caddyfile:

analytics.yourcompany.com {
  reverse_proxy plausible:8000
}

Step 6 · Bring it up (10 min)

cd ~/plausible
docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f plausible

First boot runs database migrations. ClickHouse takes a minute to initialize. Wait for Running PlausibleWeb.Endpoint with cowboy 2.x. Ctrl+C to detach.

Open https://analytics.yourcompany.com. Register the first user — that user becomes the workspace owner.

Step 7 · Add your first site (5 min)

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

Drop it in your site's <head>. Reload the page. The dashboard should show 1 pageview within 30 seconds.

Firewall and backups (10 min)

sudo ufw allow 22/tcp && sudo ufw allow 80/tcp && sudo ufw allow 443/tcp && sudo ufw --force enable

Nightly backup — both Postgres and ClickHouse:

sudo tee /etc/cron.daily/plausible-backup > /dev/null <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
set -e
BACKUP_DIR=/home/deploy/backups
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
cd /home/deploy/plausible
docker compose exec -T plausible_db pg_dump -U postgres plausible_db | gzip > "$BACKUP_DIR/plausible-pg-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz"
docker compose exec -T plausible_events_db clickhouse-client --query "BACKUP DATABASE plausible_events_db TO Disk('backups', 'plausible-$(date +%Y%m%d).zip')" || true
find "$BACKUP_DIR" -name "plausible-*" -mtime +14 -delete
EOF
sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/plausible-backup

Copy backups off-server. Analytics data is not high-drama to lose, but rebuilding a year of history from nothing is annoying.

Common pitfalls

SMTP is required. Plausible Community Edition needs SMTP for user invitations and password resets. Skipping it leaves you with a one-user instance. Postmark and Resend both have generous free tiers.
ClickHouse OOMs on tiny servers. A CX22 (4 GB) is the realistic minimum. On smaller boxes ClickHouse fights Postgres for RAM.
The tracking script gets blocked. Some ad blockers block plausible.io/js/script.js by default. Self-hosted URLs (analytics.yourcompany.com/js/script.js) are usually unblocked — which is a hidden win.
Google Analytics import. The Community Edition supports GA4 import via the UI, but the mapping loses events. Treat historical GA data as archive, not source of truth.

Updating

cd ~/plausible
git pull
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
docker image prune -f

Plausible cuts community releases every few weeks. Read release notes before major-version upgrades (v2 → v3 will need attention).

What you're paying vs Plausible Cloud / GA

Plausible on Hetzner CX22: €45/year (~$50) + your time.
Plausible Cloud (10k pageviews/mo): $108/year — cheaper than self-hosting for small traffic.
Google Analytics: free in money, real cost in cookie-banner conversion tax and DPA risk.

Self-host Plausible when data-sovereignty matters or you're already on the CX22 for other services. For a single small site, Plausible Cloud is the honest recommendation.

Self-host Plausible Analytics