Dokploy vs Sandstorm
| Tagline | Self-hosted PaaS to deploy apps and databases with Docker and Traefik | Personal server platform for running self-hosted web apps with strong sandboxing |
| Category | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS |
| Replaces | Heroku, Vercel, Netlify, Render | Heroku, Render, Netlify |
| GitHub stars | 37k | 7.1k |
| Language | TypeScript | C++ |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 4/5 Involved |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Manual | Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 4 days ago | 5 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Dokploy
- Licensing has proprietary portions (not fully permissive for all uses), unlike a pure OSS PaaS.
- No managed edge CDN or global anycast network; you supply the infrastructure.
- Relies on Docker Swarm, which is less actively developed than Kubernetes for large-scale orchestration.
- Observability and team/RBAC features are thinner than commercial platforms.
Sandstorm
- App ecosystem is very small; most popular self-hosted apps are not packaged for Sandstorm
- Project has limited active development; community and update cadence have slowed significantly
- No Docker support; apps must be specially packaged in Sandstorm's proprietary SPK format
- No horizontal scaling, load balancing, or modern cloud-native deployment patterns
Bottom line
Choose Dokploy if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Dokploy for the larger community and ecosystem. Dokploy has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Sandstorm
Personal server platform for running self-hosted web apps with strong sandboxing