PostgreSQL and SQL Server, on your own server
No managed database, no extra bill, no database port open to the internet. DotDeployer installs PostgreSQL or SQL Server on Linux on the same server as your app and manages it from there.
$ ssh -L 5432:localhost:5432 deploy@your-server
Host: localhost:5432
Database: yourapp_production
User: yourapp_app
Password: (set when you created the database)Per-site databases and users
Create or delete a PostgreSQL or SQL Server database from the dashboard in one click, with its own user and password. Each site gets its own database — nothing is shared across customers on the same server.
Connect from your laptop over an SSH tunnel
Database ports never open to the internet. Instead, DotDeployer sets up an SSH tunnel from
your laptop to the server, and your usual client — psql, Azure Data Studio, DBeaver —
connects to localhost as if the database were local. If you insist on opening
a port to one IP, a firewall-rules screen lets you do that instead.
Backups and restore
Scheduled backups run to your own S3 or DigitalOcean Spaces bucket — DotDeployer never stores a copy of your data itself. Set a retention window and older backups are pruned automatically. Restoring is a straight download-and-load from the same bucket; the steps are the same whichever provider hosts the server.
Why not a managed database?
A managed Postgres or SQL Server instance from your cloud provider typically costs more than the server it would sit next to, for a small app that doesn't need it. Running the database on the same server DotDeployer already manages costs nothing extra.
A managed database is still the right call once you outgrow one server — multiple app servers sharing one database, a need for read replicas, or a compliance requirement for a provider-run backup and failover story. DotDeployer's own database is meant for the common case: one server, one or a few sites, where the app and its database can live together.