NocoDB: Open-source Airtable Alternative  - A Self-hosted Solution with Kamal

Who is this for?

This tutorial is for anyone looking to setup their own open-source, self-hosted Airtable Alternative solution with NocoDB on a cloud server using Kamal 2. While the tutorial uses a Hetzner cloud instance, the same steps can be applied to other cloud providers such as DigitalOcean, Vultr, OVHCloud, and AWS EC2.

To manage the lifecycle of the NocoDB self-hosted deployment, the tutorial uses Kamal 2, which provides several advantages over other deployment methods:

1. Zero-downtime deploys.
2. Rolling restarts.
3. A simple one-command setup, deploy and upgrade process.
4. Automatic HTTPS via Lets Encrypt with auto-renewal.

What is NocoDB?

NocoDB is a popular open-source alternative to Airtable. It transforms any MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, or MariaDB database into a smart spreadsheet interface. With nearly 50,000 GitHub stars, it is backed by notable investors, including Naval Ravikant (Co-Founder of Angel.co), Chad Hurley (Co-Founder of YouTube), and Bob Young (Founder of Red Hat Inc.).

Prerequisites

To follow along with the tutorial, ensure you have the following:

• A domain name: For accessing NocoDB web UI and obtaining a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate for secure HTTPS access.
• A VPS (Virtual Private Server): For self-hosting NocoDB on a public cloud server.

What's Inside?

1. Welcome
2. Introduction
3. Install Kamal on your machine
4. Clone the repository
5. Purchase a domain
6. Create a server
7. Create subdomain
8. DockerHub
9. Label NocoDB Image and Push
10. Deploy!
11. Summary