Dockge

Dockge is a web-based manager for Docker Compose stacks, built by Louis Lam, the developer behind Uptime Kuma. Where Portainer exposes the full Docker API surface — individual containers, networks, volumes, images, registries — Dockge stays focused on compose stacks, which is how most self-hosted setups are actually organised. You work with stacks as the unit, not individual containers.

The interface reflects that focus. Each stack has its own panel showing container statuses, an editable compose file, and controls to pull, start, stop, and restart. A real-time terminal streams output directly in the browser when you run a command or tail logs. The whole design is noticeably cleaner than Portainer for compose-based workflows, because it does not expose operations that are not relevant to how compose stacks are managed.

The built-in compose editor means you can update a service version, add an environment variable, or change a port mapping directly in the browser, then restart the stack in the same view. For a homelab running a dozen compose stacks, this is a meaningful quality-of-life improvement over SSH sessions with a text editor.

The scope is intentionally limited. Dockge does not manage Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, or multi-server environments. It does not have the RBAC depth of Portainer or the breadth of features that come from years of development. For a single-server compose-based self-hosted stack, that scope is appropriate. For anything larger or more complex, Portainer is still the right tool.

Dockge: Pros & Cons