Concepts
Concept pages explain how OwnStack works under the hood — the mental model you load once and consult when something doesn't fit your expectation.
Pillars
| Concept | Read |
|---|---|
| Apps | Apps overview · Procfile · Config vars |
| Stacks | Stacks overview · provider pages: AWS, GCP, OpenStack, SSH |
| Deployments | Deployments overview · Build types · Multi-stack |
| Processes | Process types · Scaling · Healthchecks |
| Databases | Databases overview · Postgres · MySQL · Redis |
| Domains & SSL | Overview |
How OwnStack relates to dokku
Every stack runs dokku. OwnStack is the layer above: it provides authentication, multi-stack orchestration, the control-plane API, the CLI, the dashboard, and a layer of opinion that papers over dokku's rough edges. Most "OwnStack" features are dokku features OwnStack drives more ergonomically; a few are control-plane-only (multi-stack deploys, audit log, billing).
The control plane
The control plane is a single service (one of the apps in your account, in the self-hosted case) that holds:
- Account, user, and team data.
- The list of stacks and their credentials.
- The list of apps and their config.
- The deployment worker that pushes code/images to stacks.
- API endpoints the CLI and UI talk to.
The hosted control plane lives at api.ownstack.org. Self-hosting puts it on a stack you own — eating the dogfood. (Self-hosting introduces a small bootstrap problem on first deploy; see the self-hosting guide.)