How to deploy your first tool on Vultr

Before you start you only need 3 things: a card or PayPal account to sign up with Vultr, your computer (Windows, Mac or Linux), and the tool's page open in another browser tab on AltFreeStack.

Go to vultr.com in your browser. In the top right, click the blue Sign Up button. Type your email and set a password (or click Continue with Google/GitHub). Go to your inbox, open Vultr's email and click the link to verify your account.

Go back to Vultr and add a payment method. You won't be charged right away — you're only billed for the time a server stays on, calculated by cents per day.

On Vultr's main dashboard, click Deploy in the sidebar or the blue + Deploy Server button (top right). Select the Cloud Compute – Shared CPU option.

• Location: pick the flag of the city closest to you or your visitors (e.g. Madrid, Frankfurt, Miami). The closer it is, the lower the latency.
• Server Image: you'll see several horizontal tabs. Click the Marketplace Apps tab (don't touch anything on AltFreeStack yet — this is inside Vultr's site). In that section's search bar type Docker. You'll see a card with a blue whale icon that says Docker on Ubuntu — click that card, it'll get selected with a blue border. This way the server ships with Docker pre-installed and you won't have to fight with install commands.
• Server Size: click the Regular Performance tab. Pick the cheap option: $6/mo (1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM / 25 GB SSD) — more than enough to run most tools in the catalog.

Scroll to the bottom of the page (ignore the optional VPC or Firewall options for now) and click the blue Deploy Now button. In your product list you'll see your new server in Installing... status. Wait 1-2 minutes until it turns green with the word Running.

Click directly on your server's name in the list to open its details panel. Find these two fields and write them down or keep them handy:

• IP Address: a sequence of 4 numbers separated by dots (e.g. 149.28.45.12). Click the copy icon next to it — this is the IP you'll use throughout the guide.
• Password: next to the word Password, click the eye icon to reveal it, then the copy icon.

Open your system's console/terminal:

• On Windows: press the Windows key, type cmd (or Terminal) and press Enter.
• On Mac: press Cmd + Space, type Terminal and press Enter.

In that black window, type exactly the following, replacing YOUR_IP with the numbers you copied:

ssh root@YOUR_IP

(Real example: ssh root@149.28.45.12) and press Enter. Does a message show up asking (yes/no/[fingerprint])? Type yes on your keyboard and press Enter.

The console will ask for the password (password:): paste the password you copied in the previous step (right-click the window on Windows; Cmd + V on Mac) and press Enter.

Once you see the text root@vultr:~#, you're inside your server.

Right after logging in (in the same window where you pasted the password), copy and paste this:

mkdir app && cd app

Press Enter. This creates an empty folder called app and enters it. If you'd rather name it after your tool, e.g. umami, type mkdir umami && cd umami.

In the same console, copy and paste this command exactly and press Enter:

nano docker-compose.yml

This opens an almost-empty black screen with options at the bottom — it's a text editor inside your server. Go to the AltFreeStack tab in your browser, open the tool you chose, and click the Copy docker-compose.yml button.

Go back to your black terminal window and paste what you just copied (right-click on Windows; Cmd + V on Mac). You'll see every line of code appear at once. You don't need to press Enter after pasting.

Set your passwords: look at the text on screen. If you see lines marked with # CHANGE-ME or words like change-me, use your keyboard's arrow keys to move there, delete change-me and type a secure password you make up (or use the "Generate secure secrets" button on the AltFreeStack tool page to copy a random key).

Save and exit: press Ctrl + O then Enter (this saves what you pasted). Press Ctrl + X (this takes you out of that screen back to the regular console).

In the same window you just exited from, copy and paste this command and press Enter:

docker compose up -d

You don't need to open another terminal or do anything beforehand. You'll see the server start downloading files automatically (Pulling, Downloaded, Started). When it finishes and the line root@vultr:~/app# shows up again, the tool is running.

Open a new tab in your usual web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari). You need two pieces of information to enter:

• The IP: the same one you copied in Vultr's step 3 (e.g. 149.28.45.12).
• The Port: check it on the tool's page on AltFreeStack (under the title or in the specs you'll see a Port: field followed by a number, e.g. 3000 or 8080).

In the address bar, type:

http://YOUR_IP:PORT

(Real example: if your IP is 149.28.45.12 and the port is 3000, type http://149.28.45.12:3000). Press Enter. Done! You'll see your app's welcome screen, ready for you to create your admin user and start using it.

If you ever need to do maintenance, just open your terminal, connect like in step 4, go into the folder (cd app) and use these commands:

• Check it's still running or look at errors: docker compose ps or docker compose logs -f
• Turn the tool off: docker compose down
• Update to the latest version: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d