Custom VPS requirements
Custom VPS is for a server you already have — from a host DotDeployer doesn’t have a dedicated provider integration for, a colo box, or hardware under your desk. There’s no provider account to connect and no token to generate.
What you need: any Ubuntu 24.04 server you already have, its IP address, and a temporary root (or sudo) SSH login.
Steps:
- In DotDeployer, go to Settings → Providers, choose Custom VPS, and give it the server’s IP address and the temporary root/sudo SSH login.
- DotDeployer installs its own SSH key on the server. The temporary login is discarded — you can remove or rotate it right after.
- Add your first site from a GitHub repo — DotDeployer bootstraps the server (deploy user, firewall, security patching, the ASP.NET Core runtime your project needs, nginx, HTTPS) and deploys to it.
Billing: there’s nothing to pay DotDeployer for compute — the server is already yours, wherever it’s hosted.
Which servers qualify: any of them, as long as it runs Ubuntu 24.04 and you have root. A server DotDeployer provisioned itself through one of the other five providers doesn’t need Custom VPS — it’s already managed the same way.
After setup: the temporary SSH login isn’t needed again. DotDeployer’s own key, generated per server, is what it uses from then on.
Once connected, Custom VPS behaves exactly like every other provider in DotDeployer: the same Servers table, the same site tabs, the same deploy and rollback flow.
