Overview
Deploy BuildBase on your own infrastructure with full data sovereignty.
What is Self-Hosted?
Self-hosted mode lets you run the BuildBase platform on your own infrastructure — your cloud, your data center, or on-premises. You host three services (tenant server, client app, and auth portal) while we manage the central server that handles licensing, organization management, and admin authentication.
How It Works
BuildBase uses a split architecture:
- Central Server — Managed by BuildBase. Handles organization management, admin authentication (Google OAuth), installation licensing, and ES256 key management. You never host this.
- Tenant Server — Hosted by you. Stores and processes all your organization's data — users, emails, workflows, subscriptions, and more.
- Client App — Hosted by you. The web dashboard your team uses to manage content and data.
- Auth Portal — Hosted by you. The authentication pages for your app users (login, signup, password reset).
Your data stays on your infrastructure. The central server only handles authentication tokens and organization metadata — it never sees your application data.
Installations
An Installation is a self-hosted server instance — one Docker Compose stack running on your infrastructure. Each installation:
- Gets a unique API key for secure communication with the central server
- Can serve multiple organizations (e.g. different teams, projects, or clients)
- Has its own database, Redis, and server configuration
You can create multiple installations for different purposes:
- By region — EU Production, US Production
- By environment — Production, Staging
- Multiple orgs on one server — simplicity for smaller deployments
- Dedicated per org — maximum isolation and throughput
Installations are managed from the BuildBase Dashboard under Settings → Installations.
Requirements
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Server | Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+ recommended), 2 GB RAM, 2 vCPU minimum |
| CPU architecture | x86-64 (amd64) or 64-bit ARM (arm64) |
| Docker | Docker Engine 20+ and Docker Compose v2 |
| Database | MongoDB 7+ (included in quick start, or bring your own) |
| Redis | Redis 7+ (included in quick start) |
| Network | Public IP or domain name with ports 80/443 for production |
Docker Images
Three official images are published on Docker Hub:
| Image | Description |
|---|---|
buildbaseapp/tenant-server | Backend API server |
buildbaseapp/client | Web dashboard (Next.js) |
buildbaseapp/auth | Auth portal (login/signup) |
Supported architectures
All images are published as multi-arch manifests for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64, built on Node.js 22 Alpine. docker pull selects the correct variant automatically — no extra configuration is needed on either architecture.
arm64 covers Apple Silicon Macs, AWS Graviton, Ampere-based cloud instances, and Raspberry Pi 4/5 running a 64-bit OS.
32-bit ARM (linux/arm/v7) is not supported. MongoDB 7 does not publish 32-bit ARM builds, so the stack cannot run on 32-bit hosts.
What You Control vs. What We Control
| You Control | We Control |
|---|---|
| Tenant server, client, auth hosting | Central server hosting |
| Your MongoDB and Redis | Installation API key provisioning |
| Your data, backups, security | Organization management & licensing |
| Custom domains, SSL, network | ES256 signing keys |
| Scaling, replicas, load balancing | Admin authentication (Google OAuth) |
| Environment variables, secrets | Platform updates & security patches |
Getting Started
- Create a self-hosted organization in the dashboard
- Follow the Quick Start guide to deploy in minutes
- For production, see the Production guide