Discourse Hosting on Your Own VPS
A modern forum with no per-user pricing, sized properly for what it actually runs.
Size a server for Discourse
Every stop is a real configuration you can deploy. Priced per 30 days, billed by the hour, exclusive of 18% GST.
What Discourse is
Discourse is a modern forum platform — a Rails application with PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq behind it, and an Ember front end. It replaced a generation of PHP forums by treating reading as a first-class activity rather than an afterthought.
Two things about hosting it are commonly got wrong. The first is memory: the documented minimum of 2 GB is a genuine minimum for a very small forum, and real installations want 4 GB. Rails plus Sidekiq plus PostgreSQL plus Redis is four memory consumers, and swap thrash is the usual symptom of ignoring that.
The second is email, which matters more for Discourse than for almost anything else here. Digests, notifications and reply-by-email are core to how the platform works, and it will not complete setup without working outbound mail. Budget for a transactional mail provider and proper SPF, DKIM and DMARC — a forum whose notifications land in spam is a forum nobody returns to.
Why run Discourse on a VPS
Memory sized for Rails and Sidekiq together, rather than to a documented floor.
No per-user pricing — community size is a database row count.
Root access for the official Docker-based installer and its rebuilds.
Regions near your community, since forum reading is latency-sensitive.
Discourse features
Threaded discussion with live updates
Trust levels and community moderation
Reply by email and email digests
Full-text search
Single sign-on and OAuth providers
Plugins and theme components
Categories with per-group permissions
Recommended server
A starting point for Discourse, not a hard floor — size it on the sliders.
| Memory | 4 GB. The documented 2 GB minimum is a floor, not a target |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 vCPU; 4 for an active community |
| Storage | 40 GB, more with heavy image uploads |
| Operating system | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, which the official installer targets |
How deployment works
Discourse is installed with its official Docker-based installer, which is the only supported method and which manages Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq together. Outbound email must be configured before setup completes — a transactional provider plus SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Rebuilds after configuration changes take several minutes and need memory headroom.
What people run it for
Product communities
Support and discussion around a product, on your own domain.
Internal discussion
A searchable archive that chat tools do not give you.
Membership communities
Private categories with SSO from your own application.
Leaving hosted forums
Per-user pricing replaced by a fixed server cost.
Discourse hosting questions
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Root access, your choice of size, and no container between you and the application.