The easiest way to get started with Typebot is with the official managed service in the Cloud. You’ll have high availability, backups, security, and maintenance all managed for you by me, Baptiste, Typebot’s founder. The cloud version can save a substantial amount of developer time and resources. For most sites this ends up being the best value option and the revenue goes to funding the maintenance and further development of Typebot. So you’ll be supporting open source software and getting a great service!

​
Requirements

You need a server with Docker installed. If your server doesn’t come with Docker pre-installed, you can follow their docs to install it.

​
Installation

​
1. Download the compose file

On your server, download the latest docker-compose.yml and the starter .env file:

 wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/baptisteArno/typebot.io/latest/docker-compose.yml
 wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/baptisteArno/typebot.io/latest/.env.example -O .env

​
2. Add the required configuration

  1. You’ll first need a random 32-character secret key which will be used to encrypt sensitive data. Here is a simple way to generate one:

    openssl rand -base64 24 | tr -d '\n' ; echo

  2. Fill the .env file with your values.

  3. Configure at least one authentication provider (Email, Google, GitHub, Facebook or GitLab). More info here: Configuration.

By default the compose file will pull the latest stable Typebot images: baptistearno/typebot-builder:latest and baptistearno/typebot-viewer:latest. You can decide to replace latest with a specific version. You can find all the existing tags here

​
3. Start the server

Once you’ve added your configuration to the compose file, you’re ready to start up the server:

docker-compose up -d

When you run this command, by default, it does the following:

  • Create a database
  • Run the migrations
  • Start the builder on port 8080
  • Start the viewer on port 8081
  • All Typebot’s data is stored in the .typebot folder in the current directory

You can now navigate to http://typebot.domain.com:8080 and see the login screen. Login with the admin email to have access to a Team plan workspace automatically.

Typebot server itself does not perform SSL termination. It only runs on unencrypted HTTP. If you want to run on HTTPS you also need to set up a reverse proxy in front of the server. See below instructions.

​
Update Typebot

Typebot is updated regularly, but it is up to you to apply these updates on your server. By virtue of using Docker, these updates are safe and easy to apply.

  1. Pull the new images:

    docker-compose pull typebot-builder
docker-compose pull typebot-viewer

    Alternatively, you can pull specific versions:

     docker-compose pull typebot-builder:1.0.0
 docker-compose pull typebot-viewer:1.0.0

  2. Stop the server:

    docker-compose down

  3. Start the server (with the new images):

     docker-compose up -d

The self-hosted version is somewhat of a LTS, only getting the changes (~ once per month) after they have been battle tested on the cloud version. If you want features as soon as they are available, consider becoming a cloud user.

​
Optional extras

​
Reverse proxy

By default, Typebot runs on unencrypted HTTP on ports 8080 for the builder and 8081 for the viewer. We recommend running it on HTTPS behind a reverse proxy of some sort. You may or may not already be running a reverse proxy on your host, let’s look at both options:

​
No existing reverse proxy

If your DNS is managed by a service that offers a proxy option with automatic SSL management, feel free to use that. For example, you could use Cloudflare as a reverse proxy in front of Typebot.

Alternatively, you can run your Caddy server as a reverse proxy. This way your SSL certificate will be stored on the host machine and managed by Let’s Encrypt. The Caddy server will expose port 443, terminate SSL traffic and proxy the requests to your Typebot server.

Here is an example of a docker-compose file using Caddy as a reverse proxy:

version: '3.3'
services:
  caddy-gen:
    container_name: caddy-gen
    image: 'wemakeservices/caddy-gen:latest'
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
      - {$PWD}/.typebot/caddy-certificates:/data/caddy
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '443:443'
    depends_on:
      - typebot-builder
      - typebot-viewer

  typebot-builder:
    labels:
      virtual.host: 'typebot.domain.com' # change to your domain name
      virtual.port: '3000'
      virtual.tls-email: '[email protected]' # change to your email

  typebot-viewer:
    labels:
      virtual.host: 'bot.domain.com' # change to your domain name
      virtual.port: '3000'
      virtual.tls-email: '[email protected]' # change to your email

This config requires you to add the following DNS entry:

typebot IN A <server_ip>
bot IN A <server_ip>

You can merge this compose file with the first one. Make sure that NEXTAUTH_URL is set to https://typebot.domain.com and NEXT_PUBLIC_VIEWER_URL is set to https://bot.domain.com.

When running the compose file, it should automatically enable SSL on your server and you should be able to navigate to:

  • https://typebot.domain.com for the builder
  • https://bot.domain.com for the viewer

​
Existing reverse proxy

If you’re already running a reverse proxy, the most important things to note are:

  1. Configure the virtual hosts to match the NEXTAUTH_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_VIEWER_URL in your docker-compose configuration.
  2. Proxy the traffic to 127.0.0.1:8080 or {ip-address}:8080 and to 127.0.0.1:8081 or {ip-address}:8081 if running on a remote machine

​
SMTP

I highly recommend using an external SMTP service. There are tons of options out there, including SendInBlue, Mailgun and SendGrid. It will avoid severe headaches 😅. Then, you will only need to add the required SMTP configuration variables.

If, however, you don’t want to, you can instantiate an SMTP server in the docker-compose file.

version: '3.3'
services:
  mail:
    image: bytemark/smtp
    restart: always

And add the following variables to your .env file:

SMTP_HOST=mail
[email protected]

You will probably need to make sure that typebot.domain.com has a valid SPF record and that your server IP has a rDNS set up.

You can merge this compose file with the main one.

​
S3 storage

If you don’t already have an S3 storage available, you could include it in your docker-compose file:

version: '3.3'

volumes:
  s3-data:

services:
  minio:
    image: minio/minio
    command: server /data
    ports:
      - '9000:9000'
    environment:
      MINIO_ROOT_USER: minio
      MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: minio123
    volumes:
      - s3-data:/data
  # This service just makes sure a bucket with the right policies is created
  createbuckets:
    image: minio/mc
    depends_on:
      - minio
    entrypoint: >
      /bin/sh -c "
      sleep 10;
      /usr/bin/mc config host add minio http://minio:9000 minio minio123;
      /usr/bin/mc mb minio/typebot;
      /usr/bin/mc anonymous set public minio/typebot/public;
      exit 0;
      "

And add the following variables to your .env file:

S3_ACCESS_KEY=minio
S3_SECRET_KEY=minio123
S3_BUCKET=typebot
S3_ENDPOINT=storage.domain.com

This config requires you to add the following DNS entry:

storage IN A <server_ip>

You can merge this compose file with the main one.

​
Config example with all the extras

Here is a config example that spins up Typebot with HTTPS, SMTP and S3 storage.

version: '3.3'

volumes:
  db-data:
  s3-data:

services:
  caddy-gen:
    image: 'wemakeservices/caddy-gen:latest'
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
      - {$PWD}/.typebot/caddy-certificates:/data/caddy
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '443:443'
    depends_on:
      - typebot-builder
      - typebot-viewer
  typebot-db:
    image: postgres:14-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=typebot
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=typebot
  typebot-builder:
    labels:
      virtual.host: 'typebot.domain.com' # change to your domain
      virtual.port: '3000'
      virtual.tls-email: '[email protected]' # change to your email
    image: baptistearno/typebot-builder:latest
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - typebot-db
    extra_hosts:
      - 'host.docker.internal:host-gateway'
    # See https://docs.typebot.io/self-hosting/configuration for more configuration options
    env_file:
      - .env
  typebot-viewer:
    labels:
      virtual.host: 'bot.domain.com' # change to your domain
      virtual.port: '3000'
      virtual.tls-email: '[email protected]' # change to your email
    image: baptistearno/typebot-viewer:latest
    restart: always
    # See https://docs.typebot.io/self-hosting/configuration for more configuration options
    env_file:
      - .env
  mail:
    image: bytemark/smtp
    restart: always
  minio:
    labels:
      virtual.host: 'storage.domain.com' # change to your domain
      virtual.port: '9000'
      virtual.tls-email: '[email protected]' # change to your email
    image: minio/minio
    command: server /data
    ports:
      - '9000:9000'
    environment:
      MINIO_ROOT_USER: minio
      MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: minio123
    volumes:
      - s3_data:/data
  # This service just make sure a bucket with the right policies is created
  createbuckets:
    image: minio/mc
    depends_on:
      - minio
    entrypoint: >
      /bin/sh -c "
      sleep 10;
      /usr/bin/mc config host add minio http://minio:9000 minio minio123;
      /usr/bin/mc mb minio/typebot;
      /usr/bin/mc anonymous set public minio/typebot/public;
      exit 0;
      "

​
Build your own images

To build your own builder Docker image

docker build -t typebot-builder --build-arg SCOPE=builder .

To build your own viewer Docker image

docker build -t typebot-viewer --build-arg SCOPE=viewer .

If you’re self-hosting Typebot, sponsoring me is a great way to give back to the community and to contribute to the long-term sustainability of the project. Thank you for supporting independent creators of Free Open Source Software!

This doc has been inspired by Plausible docs. They have a similar self-hosting solutions, and their documentation is 🔥.

TroubleshootVercel