Docker Compose

If you do self-hosting, run a home lab, or manage a small VPS, you’re probably familiar with Portainer. It’s the de-facto standard: a powerful, all-encompassing “Swiss Army knife” for Docker.

But let’s be honest: sometimes the Swiss Army knife is too heavy when you just need to peel an apple.

Recently I discovered Dockge — a tool from the same developer as the popular Uptime Kuma. It made me completely rethink how I manage containers. In this article I’ll explain why Dockge can be the perfect replacement for Portainer in many scenarios.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to easily install n8n, a powerful workflow automation tool, on your server with FastPanel using Docker Compose. FastPanel is great for managing web servers, and Docker Compose simplifies the deployment of complex applications like n8n with its dependencies (PostgreSQL and Redis).

What You’ll Need

• Your server with FastPanel installed.
• A domain or subdomain you’ll use to access n8n (e.g., n8n.yourdomain.com).
• Basic knowledge of SSH and command line.

Step 1: Prepare the Server

Connect to your server via SSH and create a directory:

Hi friends! Today, we’re diving into the world of automation and deploying n8n — a powerful workflow automation tool. We’ll install it in Docker, and use HAProxy as a reliable reverse proxy to expose it to the internet.

This guide is created especially for beginners. We’ll go step by step, explaining every command so you not only do it, but also understand how everything works.

Why do we even need HAProxy?

You could just expose n8n’s ports to the internet, right? Yes, but that’s unsafe and inconvenient. HAProxy acts as both a guard and a dispatcher: