Dogger: Hosting a Docker app without “docker push”

TL;DR: https://dogger.io

If you’ve used Docker before, you know that it’s quite simple to get your app running locally using docker-compose up. However, if you want to actually host your application somewhere, it suddenly all becomes a bit more complicated.

For each app, you normally have to go through the following:

• Create a container repository for your images in your app.
• Build your images.
• Push your images to their respective repositories.
• Deploy your application to a host of your choice.

Phew! That’s a lot of steps, especially if you are just prototyping a spare-time project. To make things worse, the deployment part is quite complicated in itself, depending on the host you choose (looking at you, Kubernetes!).

But is there any way we can remove some of these steps? This is why I created Dogger.

dogger.io is a managed Docker host, but also provides a CLI that can help you try your Docker app in the cloud for free, no matter what host you use.

Getting started

• Install Node on your machine.
• Install the Dogger CLI using npm i @dogger/cli -g

Deploying your application

• Run dogger-compose up --demo

That’s it! Voila!

Your Docker application now runs in the cloud! In addition, your logs are being streamed to you, just as if you were running docker-compose up on your own machine.

This even works if you don’t refer to an image and only have build instructions referencing a Dockerfile in your docker-compose.yml!

The --demo flag means that your application will be hosted on a free demo server that doesn’t require registration. Demo servers are great for prototyping something in your application, but only last for 30 minutes.

If you want a permanent server that’s always yours, there’s a small fixed price (starting at $4.5/month). Visit dogger.io for more information.

Benefits and other worthy mentions

• Super simple to use, easy to remember — designed to remind of inbuilt Docker commands.
• Fully managed with a CLI.
• Does not require you to build and push your images separately before you can deploy.
• Allows for free demo-servers for rapid prototyping without costing extra, and without requiring registration.
• Runs on AWS Lightsail for increased availability. Even in the unlikely event that Dogger goes down, your server still lives.
• Simple pricing model. No unexpected fees.
• Shines especially for small indie-projects or spare-time projects.

Stay tuned

There’s much more to come! You can follow Dogger at IndieHackers to get updates a new milestones are released!