Openship Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Openship is an open source deployment platform you can run on your own servers for free, or pay for as a managed cloud. The self-hosted edition is excellent value; the cloud is young and its credit math is hard to predict. Best for: developers leaving Coolify or Heroku-style hosts. Price: from $5/mo, free plan yes (self-hosted). Rating: 6.5/10.

What is Openship?

We found Openship on Product Hunt, where it launched on 30 September 2026. It is a platform as a service in the Heroku mould: connect a Git repository or a local folder, and it detects the stack, builds a container image, puts it on a server, wires up a domain with free SSL and keeps older versions around so you can revert.

What sets it apart is where it runs. The whole platform is open source under Apache 2.0 and installs on any Linux server you own, or on your laptop through a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux. There is also a hosted option, Openship Cloud, operated by Oblien LLC, the company named in the footer and on the About page. The GitHub repository was created in March 2026 and already shows over 14,000 stars.

What Are Openship’s Key Features?

Local builds shipped over SSH

Openship builds the image on your own machine (or in its cloud), tags it as a fixed, versioned image, then streams it to the target server over SSH and starts it as a fresh container. Your production server never compiles anything, and Openship says nothing extra runs there. The previous version stays warm, so reverting a bad deploy does not need a rebuild. The quickstart promises a first app online in four steps, and the CLI ships on npm as openship, version 0.8.0 at the time of writing.

Databases, storage and a real mail server

PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL and S3-compatible object storage sit next to your app on a private network. Version 0.8.0, released on 27 September, added clustered PostgreSQL with standby copies and failover, sharded Redis, S3 backups on a schedule, and shared file volumes across servers. The standout extra is a built-in mail server with email accounts, webmail and the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records set up for you, sending through Amazon SES or any SMTP service. Most rivals leave email to a paid third party.

Adopting apps from Coolify, Dokploy and Dokku

This is the most unusual feature. Point Openship at a server that already runs containers and it scans them over SSH, reads their domains and volumes, and adopts them in place with no rebuild. It can also take over the reverse proxy on ports 80 and 443 from Coolify, Dokploy or Dokku, and the docs describe the switch as reversible. For anyone stuck on an older self-hosted dashboard, that lowers the cost of trying something new.

Clusters, scaling and agent access

Version 0.8.0 also installs a lightweight Kubernetes under the hood to join several of your servers into a cluster, with 1 to 100 copies per app and a WireGuard private network across providers. Every operation is exposed through an HTTP API, the CLI and an MCP endpoint, so any MCP client can deploy, read logs and resize services. Team roles go down to single projects, and an audit log records every change on every plan.

What Is It Like to Use Openship?

Getting started is quick. One install script sets up the CLI, and running openship with no arguments walks you through creating an admin login and choosing a private or public instance. It then installs itself as an always-on service, with the API on port 4000 and the dashboard on port 3001. On Linux with Docker you get the full stack, including an OpenResty edge for domains and TLS.

The desktop app is the friendliest route. It runs the Openship back end only while the window is open and needs no login, which suits solo developers who deploy from a laptop to one or two servers. Downloads cover Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, 64-bit Windows and Linux AppImage builds, all listed on the v0.8.0 GitHub release.

Documentation is thorough, with guides for preview environments, secrets, backups, server moves and billing. It is also chatty in places. The quickstart compares Openship to a kitchen and the build log to watching an oven, which reads oddly in docs aimed at people running PostgreSQL clusters.

On GitHub, the repository looks healthy. Commits landed on launch day, the main language is TypeScript, around 75 contributors appear in the GitHub API and there were 132 open issues when we checked. There is no separate enterprise folder or second licence in the repo, so the self-hosted edition is not a trimmed version of the cloud.

Where Does Openship Fall Short?

The cloud credit system is opaque. Each plan includes usage credits (400 on Hobby, 1,700 on Starter) that cover both running apps and builds. The billing docs say a credit is not a minute and that consumption depends on CPU, memory and transfer under the current Oblien rate card. Openship publishes no per-resource rate of its own, so you cannot work out before paying how long 400 credits lasts.

Oblien’s own pricing page gives a hint. It prices 1 credit at about one cent and shows an illustrative small workspace (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, light use) costing $8.02 for 30 days. If Openship credits follow a similar card, a Hobby plan would not keep even one small always-on app running all month. Openship’s docs admit that continuous hosting can require top-ups, which is honest but vague.

The marketing site and the plan data conflict in places. The Cloud card on the marketing site says monthly or annual billing, but the pricing page says monthly billing only and the public plans endpoint returns annual billing as switched off. The terms and privacy policy mention an Openship Business plan with 12 months of log retention that appears nowhere on the pricing page. The features grid lists PostgreSQL 14 to 17, while the latest changelog describes upgrades from 17 to 18.

Plan changes are also strict. Switching plans starts a new full-price billing cycle with no proration and no refund of the old period. Moving from Hobby to Starter halfway through a month means paying for both.

Finally, this is software before version 1.0. Version 0.8.0 shipped three days before launch with 62 listed updates, and the cloud offers only a best-effort 99.9% uptime target outside Enterprise. Auto Sleep is the default on Cloud; one line in the docs says visitors do not wait for a wake-up, and another warns of a short wake-up on the first request after a quiet spell.

How Much Does Openship Cost?

Openship Cloud starts at $5 per month, and the self-hosted platform is free forever under Apache 2.0 with no seat limits or metering. You only pay your own server provider. We checked the prices in the static pricing page, the rendered page and the public plans endpoint, and all three match.

The four Cloud plans are Hobby at $5 per month (400 credits, 3 projects, 1 running service, up to 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM per service), Starter at $20 (1,700 credits, 10 projects, 3 services), Pro at $39 (3,500 credits, 50 projects, 10 services) and Scale at $99 (9,000 credits, 50 services, no project limit). Enterprise is priced through sales. Credit packs cost $5 for 400, $20 for 1,700 or $50 for 4,500.

Every plan covers the whole organisation with unlimited team members, which is a real advantage over per-seat hosts. A paid plan is required to deploy anything on Cloud. The plans endpoint also lists a hidden Free tier, but it allows 0 projects and 0 build minutes, so treat Cloud as paid only.

Against rivals, the self-hosted edition matches Coolify and Dokploy, which are also free to self-host. On managed options, Coolify Cloud charges $5 per month for 2 connected servers plus $3 per extra server, and Dokploy Cloud starts at $4.50 per server per month. Both of those still run your apps on your own servers. Railway, a nearer match to Openship Cloud, charges $5 per month for Hobby with $5 of usage included, and publishes its resource rates.

Who is Openship Best For?

Use Openship if you run your own VPS or homelab and want a free, open source platform with databases, email, previews and reverts in one place. It also suits teams already on Coolify, Dokploy or Dokku who want to try something else without rebuilding every app, and developers who like deploying from a desktop app rather than a web dashboard on a server.

Skip Openship if you need hosting costs you can estimate on a managed cloud. Until Openship publishes its own credit rates, Railway or a fixed-price VPS with Coolify is easier to budget. Skip it too if you need a signed SLA without an Enterprise deal, or if software before version 1.0 on production traffic worries you.

Best Openship Alternatives

Coolify

The best-known open source self-hosted PaaS, free to run on your own servers with no feature limits. Coolify Cloud costs $5 per month for 2 servers plus $3 per extra server, with a 20% discount on yearly billing. It is more mature than Openship but lacks the built-in mail server and container adoption.

Dokploy

Another open source platform built on Docker with a free self-hosted edition. Its cloud Hobby plan is $4.50 per server per month for 1 user, and Startup starts at $15 per month with unlimited users and up to 3 servers. A 7-day trial is offered without a card.

Railway

A fully managed platform with no self-hosted edition. Hobby costs $5 per month including $5 of usage, and Pro costs $20 per month including $20 of usage, with extra usage charged by published resource rates. It is the most direct rival to Openship Cloud, and its pricing is easier to predict.

Final Verdict: Is Openship Worth It?

As a self-hosted platform, yes. It costs nothing, it is truly open source under Apache 2.0, and it bundles things rivals charge for or leave out: a mail server, cluster scaling, audit logs and the ability to adopt running containers from Coolify or Dokploy. The pace of development is fast, and the docs are unusually complete for a project this young.

Openship Cloud is harder to recommend today. The $5 entry price looks cheap, but credit usage is tied to a rate card Openship does not publish, plan changes restart billing at full price, and parts of the marketing site contradict the plan data. Start with the free self-hosted edition on a cheap VPS, and wait for clearer credit rates before moving production traffic to the cloud. We rate it 6.5 out of 10.