Host Invoice Ninja on your VPS

SaaS invoicing vendors charge per user or per transaction volume. FreshBooks starts at $19/month for a single user; QuickBooks Online ranges from $35 to $90/month depending on the plan. As your team grows or your client count increases, the SaaS bill scales linearly with no corresponding increase in value. On an entry-level VPS at 99 DH/month, Invoice Ninja runs with no user or client limits, and the cost stays flat regardless of growth. Billing data remains in your infrastructure, subject to your own retention policy, without transiting through a third-party's servers. More than 100,000 businesses worldwide have already made this choice with Invoice Ninja's self-hosted deployment.

Version 5.13.45, released on 9 October 2026, requires a specific minimum environment. Plan for at least 2 GB of RAM allocated to the entire stack: the Invoice Ninja PHP-FPM container consumes 300 to 500 MB under load, MySQL 8.4 LTS takes 400 to 700 MB depending on the buffer pool size, and Redis 7.4 stays light at 30–50 MB at rest. A VPS with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM provides comfortable headroom for parallel PDF generation. For storage, allocate at least 10 GB for Docker volumes: the database grows slowly, but invoice PDFs accumulate in storage/. MySQL 8.4 LTS is recommended by the official documentation for its compatibility guarantees through 2032; avoid MariaDB, which has known incompatibilities with certain Invoice Ninja v5 migrations. Redis 7.4 handles the asynchronous job queue (email sending, PDF generation). PHP 8.2 or 8.3 is bundled in the official invoiceninja/invoiceninja:5.13.45 image and does not need to be installed separately. Docker Engine 24+ and Docker Compose v2.x are required.

Invoice Ninja 5.13.45 natively supports more than 25 gateways. Stripe is the most complete: it handles card payments, SEPA direct debit, ACH transfers, and, since version 5.13.43, Stripe PromptPay for Southeast Asian markets. To activate it, create a restricted API key in the Stripe dashboard with charges:write, customers:write, and payment_methods:read permissions, then enter it in Invoice Ninja. PayPal integrates via the REST API (not the legacy NVP API): create an application in the PayPal developer portal, retrieve the client_id and client_secret, and configure them in Invoice Ninja's PayPal gateway. For SEPA direct debits in Europe, GoCardless is the recommended route: the debit mandate is signed online by the client through the Invoice Ninja portal, without exchanging bank details by email. Mollie is a popular all-in-one alternative for European businesses, unifying card, bank transfer, iDEAL, and Bancontact under a single integration.

The backup strategy must cover two distinct elements: the MySQL database and the file storage volume. For MySQL, schedule a daily dump using docker compose exec db mysqldump -u ninja -p invoiceninja | gzip > /backups/invoiceninja-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz via a cron job or systemd timer. For files (generated PDFs, logos, attachments), back up the ./data directory with rsync to an S3-compatible object store. Retain at least 30 rolling days and test restoration quarterly.

To update to a future version, the procedure is: update the image tag in your Compose file (for example from 5.13.45 to the next version), pull the new image with docker compose pull app, then run docker compose up -d app worker followed by docker compose exec app php artisan migrate --force. The migration runs automatically on startup in some configurations, but it is safer to trigger it explicitly. Review the GitHub changelog before any major update (for example a 5.x to 6.x jump): additional migration steps may be required.

Four issues come up frequently during initial deployment.

Error SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused: MySQL is not yet ready when the app container tries to connect. Add a healthcheck directive to the db service and a service_healthy condition in the app's depends_on. Alternatively, wait 30 seconds after docker compose up -d db before starting the app.

Emails are not sent: verify that the worker service is running with docker compose ps worker. If the status shows Exited, inspect the logs: docker compose logs worker. The most common cause is an incorrect MAIL_HOST or an SMTP port blocked by the hosting provider's firewall.

Blank page or 500 error after migration: the storage/ directory has incorrect permissions. From the host, run docker compose exec app chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/app/storage && docker compose exec app php artisan config:clear && docker compose exec app php artisan cache:clear.

PDF generation produces empty files: Invoice Ninja uses Snappy (wkhtmltopdf) or an alternative depending on configuration. Check that the PDF_GENERATOR variable is set (possible values: snappy, browsershot, phantom) and that the corresponding binary is present in the image. The official invoiceninja/invoiceninja:5.13.45 image includes wkhtmltopdf; if you built a custom image, ensure you included it.

Invoice Ninja 5.13.45, published on 9 October 2026, is a mature and actively maintained invoicing solution. The Elastic License 2.0 permits self-hosting for any internal use without restriction: you owe nothing as long as you do not resell access as a service. The Docker stack (official image + MySQL 8.4 LTS + Redis 7.4) is reproducible in under an hour on any VPS with 2 GB of RAM. The white-label module remains optional at $30/year: for the vast majority of freelancers and SMBs, the 'Created with Invoice Ninja' footer on PDFs is not an obstacle. If your client volume exceeds 20 or your billing data must remain in your infrastructure for legal or compliance reasons, self-hosted deployment is both economically and technically justified. Our team is available at [email protected] to help you right-size your VPS and configure backups.