What people ask before installing it.
Licensing has a page of its own and billing has another. The rest is here.
Do I need Docker Swarm or Kubernetes?
Neither is something you set up.
portiger install installs Docker and starts a workload
pool on the first node, and every stack runs as a service in that
pool from day one — on a single node as much as on three.
What Max adds is that the pool can grow to three nodes and that a stack can be placed across them. You never operate the pool yourself.
What happens to my containers if I stop using Portiger?
They keep running. The pool is Docker's own, and it does not need the panel to keep a service up.
Where the compose document lives depends on the stack. A Git stack's
compose file and its portiger.yaml are in your
repository, where they always were. A manual stack's compose is
stored in the panel's database and shown on its Edit screen, where
you can copy it.
How does Portiger get onto a node?
The first node takes one command:
curl -fsSL get.portiger.com | sh -s -- <licence key>
fetches the package and runs portiger install, which
installs Docker, starts the pool and opens the panel.
Further nodes are added from the panel. You give it SSH access to the machine once; it installs the same binary there and joins it to the pool, and the SSH access is not needed afterwards. Nodes talk to each other on three ports inside your network.
What does a rollback actually do?
Every compose write archives the version it replaces, so the previous release is still there to redeploy rather than being rebuilt from source. Your images are already on the host, so a rollback is a redeploy rather than a build.
What it does not do is roll back your database. A schema migration that ran on the way up has still run, and no deployment tool can undo that for you.
Can I use my own reverse proxy?
Yes, and you may not have to choose. If a Traefik is already answering on the machine's web ports, Portiger detects it and offers either to adopt it as it is or to import its routes and rebuild them under its own control. If nothing is there, it installs its own.
A stack can also publish a port on every node and sit behind whatever you already run.
Is there a hosted version?
No, and there is no plan for one. The control plane goes on a machine you own. What we run is the licence server it checks in with and the account area where you buy a plan.
The one piece that runs on our side is the Assistant, on the Max plan: your installation links to it with a token, and it answers questions and plans installs you approve.
What happens when my installation cannot reach you?
Nothing stops. A licence check that fails leaves the installation running exactly as it was, on the licence it already holds. What bounds an outage is that licence's own expiry, not the moment contact was lost. The licensing page has the schedule and the detail.
Is there a free option?
Yes. The Community plan is free for one node and one operator. Free does not mean keyless: every installation activates with a key, because what a plan allows comes from the licence rather than from the build. A free key costs nothing and does not expire.
What do you collect?
A licensed installation tells the licence server which licence it is and proves it holds the matching key. It does not send us your stacks, your container names, your logs, your metrics or your customers' data. The full field-by-field list is in the privacy notice.
When you use the Assistant, the request you type and what it needs to know about the installation to answer it are sent to Portiger's Assistant service. Nothing is sent when you do not use it.
How does payment work?
Through Polar Software, Inc., the merchant of record: Polar takes the payment, handles the tax for your country and issues the invoice, so the seller on your receipt is Polar and we are the vendor of the software. Nothing is on sale while the beta runs. The terms are on the billing page.
Which Linux does it run on?
Debian and Ubuntu, from a .deb package, on amd64 and
arm64 — a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with a 64-bit operating system works.
There is no rpm and no Windows.
I already have compose projects on the machine. Can I bring them in?
Yes. Projects the panel finds are listed as external stacks. "Bring into Portiger" redeploys one as a service in the pool, keeping its volumes and networks, and from then on it is managed like any other stack. Until then it is watched, not managed.
What does the Assistant see?
It reads the installation through the panel, with your permission, then plans a stack and shows you the plan, the compose file and a security review. It deploys only after you approve, and only into the stack you named.
Where do I report a security problem?
security@portiger.com. What we do with it, and what we ask of you, is on the security page.