Collaboration & Productivity

Planka

Planka: self-hosted Kanban board — organize sprints and team projects with cards, lists and swimlanes on your VPS, MIT-licensed.

Official documentation

About Planka

Planka is a fast, open-source Kanban board built with React and Node.js. Inspired by Trello and Jira, it gives teams a visual way to manage projects, tasks and workflows — all running on your own VPS with no per-seat pricing.

Deploy on a ServOrbit VPS in minutes: one Docker Compose stack with Planka and its PostgreSQL database. Create boards, lists and cards, assign members, attach files and track progress through swimlanes — everything in a clean interface that loads instantly.

With its MIT licence, Planka is free to self-host with no feature gates or user limits. Your project data stays on your infrastructure, and the admin credentials are generated at deploy time.

What gets installed

Ready when the VPS starts

Compatible OS
Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12
Application
Planka
Tech stack
DockerNode.jsPostgreSQL
Minimum RAM
1 GB (2 GB recommended for teams)
Minimum CPU
1 vCPU
Default port
1337
Access
root over SSH

Key features

  • Trello-style Kanban boards with lists, cards and drag-and-drop
  • Swimlanes to separate epics or workstreams within a single board
  • Card assignments, due dates, labels, checklists and file attachments
  • Real-time collaboration — all changes update live for every team member
  • Admin credentials generated at deploy time — no manual password setup
  • MIT licence — unlimited users, no feature tiers, fully self-hosted

When to use this solution?

Software sprint tracking

Create a board per sprint with To Do, In Progress, Review and Done lists. Assign cards to developers, set due dates and move tasks across columns as work progresses.

Agency project management

Run client projects on separate boards with per-project members. Swimlanes keep epics organised while card labels track priority and status without a SaaS subscription.

Personal productivity

Self-host a private Kanban board for your own tasks and side projects. No data leaves your server — just a running VPS and a generated admin password.

Guide

Deploy Planka on your VPS

  1. Create the VPS

    Choose a plan with at least 1 GB RAM and 10 GB SSD. The Planka template deploys the app and its PostgreSQL database in Docker — no domain required.

  2. Retrieve your admin credentials

    Once the VPS is active, open your client area and copy the generated admin password. The login email is [email protected].

  3. Log in to Planka

    Navigate to your VPS IP address in a browser. Enter [email protected] and the generated password. Change your email and password from the profile settings.

  4. Create your first board

    Click the + button on the dashboard to create a project and add a board. Name your lists (Backlog, In Progress, Done), add cards and start managing your work visually.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about Planka

← Back to Collaboration & ProductivityAll applications
Planka is an open-source, self-hosted Kanban board inspired by Trello. It lets teams manage projects with boards, lists and cards on their own infrastructure.

Embed the deploy button

Maintaining a project that uses Planka? This button lets your readers deploy it on a VPS in one click, without reading Docker documentation.

Deploy Planka on ServOrbit
Markdown
[![Deploy Planka on ServOrbit](https://servorbit.com/brand/deploy/button.svg)](https://servorbit.com/vps-cloud?template=planka&utm_source=deploy-badge&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=planka)
HTML
<a href="https://servorbit.com/vps-cloud?template=planka&utm_source=deploy-badge&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=planka"><img src="https://servorbit.com/brand/deploy/button.svg" alt="Deploy Planka on ServOrbit" height="40"></a>

The button points to a VPS order with the template preselected. The image is served from servorbit.com — nothing to host on your side.

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Need help?

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