PostHog on Hetzner: Self-Host Product Analytics with Docker (€16.41/mo, 45 min)

Goal: a fully working PostHog self-hosted install on a Hetzner CX42 (€16.41/mo) running ClickHouse + PostgreSQL + Redis + the PostHog app, behind Caddy auto-HTTPS, in ~45 minutes. This is the heaviest recipe in the library — but also the most powerful, because PostHog is product analytics, feature flags, session replay, A/B tests, and surveys in one stack.

Tested on a fresh Hetzner CX42 (4 vCPU / 16 GB RAM / 160 GB SSD) in Falkenstein, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 2026-05-02. The official Helm chart targets Kubernetes; for a single-node self-host, we use the maintained posthog/posthog Docker Compose setup which is officially supported up to ~5M events/mo per node.

Why PostHog (and when it’s overkill)

PostHog is product analytics, not page analytics. Pick it if you need any of these:

• Cohort analysis (“users who did X then Y”)
• Funnels with conversion windows
• Session replay (full DOM video reconstruction)
• Feature flags + A/B tests + surveys
• Product analytics SDKs for iOS / Android / Flutter / React Native
• SQL-level access to your event data (ClickHouse direct)

If your only goal is “leave GA4 with pageview dashboards”, PostHog is way overkill. Plausible or Umami will serve you faster, lighter, cheaper. PostHog is for SaaS teams who want Mixpanel/Amplitude features without paying $500-$5000/mo.

Hardware sizing (this matters)

ClickHouse alone wants 8+ GB RAM for a comfortable indie-scale install. Plus PostgreSQL (~1 GB), Redis (~512 MB), the PostHog app (~2 GB), and Plugin Server (~1 GB). Total floor: 16 GB RAM.

Below 5M events/mo you’re paying €16.41/mo. Above that you’re either upgrading or sharding ClickHouse. Don’t try CX22/CX32 — ClickHouse will OOM-kill within hours.

Step 1 — Provision CX42 + DNS

Hetzner Cloud Console → Add Server → Falkenstein → Ubuntu 24.04 → CX42 → SSH key → name posthog-1. €16.41/mo. Note the public IPv4 as $IP.

# DNS
Type: A
Name: app          (PostHog at app.your-site.com)
Value: $IP
TTL:   60

Step 2 — Bootstrap the server

ssh root@$IP
apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y curl ca-certificates gnupg ufw git

# Docker
install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" \
  | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
apt update && apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

# Firewall
ufw default deny incoming && ufw default allow outgoing
ufw allow 22/tcp && ufw allow 80/tcp && ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw --force enable

# Disable Linux transparent huge pages (ClickHouse requirement)
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
cat >> /etc/rc.local <<'EOF'
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
EOF
chmod +x /etc/rc.local

(THP off improves ClickHouse latency by 20%+ on this size of box. Mandatory.)

Step 3 — Clone the official PostHog Docker setup

mkdir -p /opt/posthog && cd /opt/posthog
git clone https://github.com/PostHog/posthog.git .
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env — minimum required:

SECRET_KEY=$(openssl rand -base64 64 | tr -d '\n')
SITE_URL=https://app.your-site.com
DEPLOYMENT=docker_compose
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 32)
REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379/
DEBUG=0

Save and chmod 600.

Step 4 — Bring up the stack

The official docker-compose.hobby.yml is the maintained single-node compose file:

docker compose -f docker-compose.hobby.yml up -d

This pulls ~3 GB of images and starts 8 services: web, worker, plugins, db (Postgres), clickhouse, kafka, zookeeper, redis. First boot takes 4–6 minutes — Kafka topics initialize, ClickHouse runs schema migrations, Postgres bootstraps.

Watch progress:

docker compose -f docker-compose.hobby.yml logs -f web

You’re waiting for Booting worker with pid: ... [INFO] Listening at: http://0.0.0.0:8000.

Verify locally:

curl -I http://127.0.0.1:8000
# HTTP/1.1 302 Found  Location: /signup

Step 5 — Caddy + Let’s Encrypt

apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' \
  | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' \
  | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
apt update && apt install -y caddy

cat > /etc/caddy/Caddyfile <

<script>
!function(t,e){var o,n,p,r;e.__SV||(window.posthog=e,e._i=[],e.init=function(i,s,a){function g(t,e){var o=e.split(".");2==o.length&&(t=t[o[0]],e=o[1]),t[e]=function(){t.push([e].concat(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments,0)))}}(p=t.createElement("script")).type="text/javascript",p.crossOrigin="anonymous",p.async=!0,p.src=s.api_host.replace(".i.posthog.com","-assets.i.posthog.com")+"/static/array.js",(r=t.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(p,r);var u=e;for(void 0!==a?u=e[a]=[]:a="posthog",u.people=u.people||[],u.toString=function(t){var e="posthog";return"posthog"!==a&&(e+="."+a),t||(e+=" (stub)"),e},u.people.toString=function(){return u.toString(1)+".people (stub)"},o="init me ws ge fs capture calculateEventProperties register register_once register_for_session unregister unregister_for_session getFeatureFlag getFeatureFlagPayload isFeatureEnabled reloadFeatureFlags updateEarlyAccessFeatureEnrollment getEarlyAccessFeatures on onFeatureFlags onSurveysLoaded onSessionId getSurveys getActiveMatchingSurveys renderSurvey canRenderSurvey canRenderSurveyAsync identify setPersonProperties group resetGroups setPersonPropertiesForFlags resetPersonPropertiesForFlags setGroupPropertiesForFlags resetGroupPropertiesForFlags reset get_distinct_id getGroups get_session_id get_session_replay_url alias set_config startSessionRecording stopSessionRecording sessionRecordingStarted captureException loadToolbar get_property getSessionProperty createPersonProfile opt_in_capturing opt_out_capturing has_opted_in_capturing has_opted_out_capturing clear_opt_in_out_capturing debug getPageViewId captureTraceFeedback captureTraceMetric".split(" "),n=0;n

cat > /usr/local/bin/posthog-pg-backup.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
DATE=$(date +%F)
mkdir -p /backups/posthog
cd /opt/posthog
docker compose -f docker-compose.hobby.yml exec -T db \
  pg_dump -U posthog posthog | gzip > /backups/posthog/pg-$DATE.sql.gz
find /backups/posthog -name "pg-*.sql.gz" -mtime +14 -delete
EOF
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/posthog-pg-backup.sh
echo "0 4 * * * /usr/local/bin/posthog-pg-backup.sh" | crontab -

cd /opt/posthog && git pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.hobby.yml pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.hobby.yml up -d