Metabase Hosting on Your Own VPS

Metabase is a business intelligence tool: you connect your databases, then ask questions and build charts and dashboards, with a visual query builder for people who don't write SQL and a SQL editor for those who do. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it. The first start takes a few minutes while Metabase sets up its database. You get:

• Metabase 0.64.4, open-source edition (AGPL-3.0), with PostgreSQL 18 as its application database. Metabase keeps your questions, dashboards and users there instead of in the default embedded file, which Metabase doesn't recommend for production.
• An HTTPS address like yourname-x7k2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate.
• Your admin account already created. Metabase's setup screen is completed before the app is reachable, with your Devoster account email and a generated password shown in the dashboard.
• Sensible defaults: anonymous usage tracking and update checks off, Java memory sized to your plan, and data source credentials encrypted with a key generated on your server.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, reset the admin password, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. See the other apps that install this way on the One-Click Apps page.

Metabase doesn't store your business data; it queries it where it lives. Add data sources in Admin settings: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, MongoDB and more are supported. The PostgreSQL that comes with this install is Metabase's own application database, not a place for your data.

A few habits make the connection safe and fast:

• Use a read-only database user for Metabase, limited to the schemas people should see.
• Allow only this server's IP. Each Devoster VPS has a dedicated IPv4, so you can allow-list exactly one address in your database's firewall.
• Use TLS or an SSH tunnel when the database is on another network; Metabase supports both in the connection settings.
• Mind the distance. Queries travel between Utah and your database. Dashboards over a database on another continent will be slower than ones next door.

Heavy queries run on your database, not on the VPS, so a slow dashboard is often an index or a query to fix rather than a plan to upgrade.

The open-source edition covers the core of Metabase:

• Questions built with the visual query builder (filter, summarise, join) or in the SQL editor, with variables for reusable queries.
• Dashboards with filters, multiple tabs and click-through to the underlying data.
• Models to give your team clean, named starting points, and automatic explorations (X-rays) of a table.
• Accounts and groups with data permissions for your team.
• Alerts and dashboard subscriptions to Slack. Slack works over HTTPS; email delivery doesn't (see below).

What carries Metabase branding: public links and guest embeds of charts and dashboards show a "Powered by Metabase" banner in the open-source edition. Removing it, and the other white-labelling options, needs a paid Metabase plan, as do features such as single sign-on. If you only need dashboards for your own team, none of that gets in the way.

Metabase runs on Java and needs more memory than most self-hosted apps: about 1.25 GB of RAM at idle for Metabase itself. On top of that come PostgreSQL, the HTTPS proxy and the work of loading results for everyone looking at dashboards at once. The install sets Java's memory limit from the plan: 1 GB on Micro, 2 GB on Starter, 4 GB from Advanced up.

You can upgrade from the panel later; Java's memory limit follows the new plan with the next update. If dashboards are slow on a plan that isn't short of memory, look at the queries and indexes on your database first.

Outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans, and no email is configured in Metabase. What that means in practice:

• No forgot-password email. Reset the admin password from the Devoster dashboard; as admin, you can reset other people's passwords in Metabase.
• Invitations show a link to copy. When you add a person, Metabase gives you an invite link to send them yourself, in chat or any other way.
• No email alerts or subscriptions. Send them to Slack instead, which works normally.

If you need email delivery, configure an external email provider's SMTP settings in Metabase's admin and ask us to open its submission port.

Because the Metabase login is on a public HTTPS address and can see your business data, use strong passwords and give each person their own account in a group with only the data they need.

We test new Metabase versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if Metabase doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically. Metabase migrates its application database on upgrade, which is one more reason the snapshot matters. Auto-update can be switched off.

The open-source edition is licensed under the AGPL-3.0. Using it inside your company is what it is made for; if you modify Metabase's code and offer it to others over a network, the AGPL's source-sharing terms apply. This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security, the databases you connect and who can see them are your responsibility. We don't help with building questions or dashboards; Metabase's documentation and Learn site cover that. Nightly backups (3 days) cover the whole VPS, including Metabase's application database. When is this the wrong choice? If you need single sign-on, white-labelling or interactive embedding in your own product, you need a paid Metabase plan.