Why self-host a notes app
Every popular notes SaaS either monetises your data, imposes storage limits or charges for sync. Self-hosting Memos inverts the model: your notes live in a SQLite file on your own VPS, exported at any time via the REST API, and synced across devices by simply pointing your browser at your server. The 20 MB image means you can run it on any existing VPS without touching RAM headroom, and the Go binary starts in under 5 seconds — faster than most SaaS dashboards load.
What you get with a self-hosted Memos
- Twitter/Flomo-inspired micro-note interface — type and press Enter; your memo is saved instantly with a timestamp.
- Markdown with live preview — bold, italic, code blocks, checkboxes, inline images and links all render in the timeline.
- Tag-based organisation — add
#tagnameanywhere in a note; the sidebar shows a filterable tag cloud. - Full-text search across your entire history — no indexing delay, instant results.
- RESTful API on
/api/v1/— post notes from scripts, CI pipelines, Telegram bots or Raycast extensions. - Multi-user support with access control — run a shared team standup log or incident journal.
- Public or private sharing per note — share individual memos via link without exposing the whole instance.
- ~20 MB Docker image, under 128 MB RAM, SQLite by default — backup is a single file copy.
- MIT licence — no subscription, no telemetry, no vendor lock-in.
Requirements
A ServOrbit VPS with Ubuntu 24.04 and at least 512 MB RAM. Memos idles under 128 MB with SQLite, so it co-locates comfortably with other containers on any existing 1 GB instance. Docker and Docker Compose are provisioned automatically when you deploy via the ServOrbit marketplace. No domain name is required — the web UI is accessible on port 5230 directly.
Deploy Memos on your VPS
One-click deploy from the ServOrbit marketplace
Open your ServOrbit control panel, go to Marketplace → Collaboration & Productivity → Memos, and click Deploy. Docker pulls neosmemo/memos:stable and starts the container. The Memos web UI is available on port 5230 in under 5 seconds.
Create your admin account
Navigate to http://<your-vps-ip>:5230. On the first visit, Memos prompts you to create an admin username and password. Fill in the form and click Sign up. You are logged in immediately — no email verification required.
Capture your first memo
Type anything in the text input at the top of the timeline and press Ctrl+Enter. The memo appears in your timeline with a timestamp. Use #tagname anywhere in the text to tag the note — it becomes filterable from the sidebar tag cloud.
Enable Markdown and organise with tags
Memos renders Markdown live: **bold**, backtick code, - [ ] checkbox, [link](url) and  all work inline. Build a tag vocabulary — #todo, #idea, #log, #decision — and use the sidebar to filter any tag with one click.
Connect via the REST API (optional)
Go to Settings → My Account → Access Tokens and create an API token. You can now POST new memos: curl -X POST http://<vps-ip>:5230/api/v1/memo -H 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' -d '{"content":"#standup shipped auth module"}'.
Logging in for the first time
Open the address as soon as the installation is complete and click “Sign up”: you choose your own username and password, and this very first account becomes the Host (administrator) account. Then go to Settings > System and DISABLE public registrations.
Use case: team daily standup journal
Deploy one Memos instance for your engineering team. Go to Admin → Users and create one account per developer. Each person captures their daily standup using tags like #shipped, #blocked, #next. Admins see all notes across all users — a searchable, permanent record of team progress without heavyweight project management overhead.
Backup and data portability
Memos stores all data in a single SQLite database at /var/opt/memos/memos_prod.db inside the container volume. To back up: docker exec memos sqlite3 /var/opt/memos/memos_prod.db .dump > backup.sql. To export via the API: GET /api/v1/memo?limit=1000 returns all memos as JSON.
