This is Part 2 of #SelfHoster Series,

• Part 1 - Self Hosting Plane Locally
• Part 2 - Local Development Setup
• Part 3 - Whitelabel Customizations and building Docker Image

Last part, was focused on how you can setup the open source Project Management Tool locally using Docker.

In this episode, I am going to show you how you can self-host Plane Locally manually, so that it helps you do changes as a Developer.

Running the Plane App Locally :

We can run the plane app, using the following methods :

1. Method 1 - using plane selfhosted's setup.sh - Part1
2. Method 2 - Running using Docker Compose
3. Method 3 - Running manually through pnpm workspaces (best for developers)

Watch video tutorial

Method 2 - Using Docker Compose

1. Go to https://github.com/makeplane/plane

2. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/makeplane/plane.git
cd plane

1. You'll mainly work inside: (project structure)

plane/
 ├── app/
 ├── docker-compose-local.yml
 ├── docker-compose.yml
 ├── .env.example

4. Environment configuration (.env)

Create your environment file:

cp .env.example .env

Important variables to configure:

APP_ENV=production
DEBUG=0
SECRET_KEY=super-secret-key

Generate a secret key :

openssl rand --hex 32

This will generate a unique string, use this in SECRET_KEY

Database

POSTGRES_USER=plane
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=plane_password
POSTGRES_DB=plane
POSTGRES_HOST=postgres
POSTGRES_PORT=5432

Redis:

REDIS_HOST=redis
REDIS_PORT=6379

Frontend URL (important)

NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL=https://localhost:3000

The complete environment variables looks like this :

# Backend
# Debug value for api server use it as 0 for production use
DEBUG=0

# Secret Key for Django generate using openssl rand --hex 32
SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key

CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS="http://localhost:3000,http://localhost:3001,http://localhost:3002,http://localhost:3100"

# Database Settings
POSTGRES_USER="plane"
POSTGRES_PASSWORD="plane"
POSTGRES_HOST="plane-db"
POSTGRES_DB="plane"
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://${POSTGRES_USER}:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@${POSTGRES_HOST}:${POSTGRES_PORT}/${POSTGRES_DB}

# Redis Settings
REDIS_HOST="plane-redis"
REDIS_PORT="6379"
REDIS_URL="redis://${REDIS_HOST}:6379/"

# RabbitMQ Settings
RABBITMQ_HOST="plane-mq"
RABBITMQ_PORT="5672"
RABBITMQ_USER="plane"
RABBITMQ_PASSWORD="plane"
RABBITMQ_VHOST="plane"

# AWS Settings
AWS_REGION=""
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="access-key"
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="secret-key"
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL="http://localhost:9000"
# Changing this requires change in the proxy config for uploads if using minio setup
AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME="uploads"
# Maximum file upload limit
FILE_SIZE_LIMIT=5242880
# Signed URL expiration time in seconds (default: 3600 = 1 hour)
# Set to 30 for 30 seconds, 300 for 5 minutes, etc.
SIGNED_URL_EXPIRATION=3600

# Settings related to Docker
DOCKERIZED=1 # deprecated

# set to 1 If using the pre-configured minio setup
USE_MINIO=0


# Email redirections and minio domain settings
WEB_URL="http://localhost:8000"

# Gunicorn Workers
GUNICORN_WORKERS=2

# Base URLs
ADMIN_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3001"
ADMIN_BASE_PATH="/god-mode/"

SPACE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3002"
SPACE_BASE_PATH="/spaces"

APP_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3000"
APP_BASE_PATH=""

LIVE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3100"
LIVE_BASE_PATH="/live"

LIVE_SERVER_SECRET_KEY="secret-key"

# Hard delete files after days
HARD_DELETE_AFTER_DAYS=60

# Force HTTPS for handling SSL Termination
MINIO_ENDPOINT_SSL=0

# API key rate limit
API_KEY_RATE_LIMIT="60/minute"

From the root folder:

# To Stop  
docker compose -f docker-compose-local.yml down 

# To start the app
docker compose -f docker-compose-local.yml up -d

What this does:

• Starts all required services (PostgreSQL, Redis, Plane API, frontend, proxy, workers, etc.)
• Runs them detached (-d) in the background

First boot may take a few minutes

Upgrading Plane

git pull origin main
docker compose down
docker compose up -d --build

Always back up:

• PostgreSQL volume
• Media files

Method 3 - Using Pnpm workspaces (For Developers)

Download pnpm

git clone https://github.com/makeplane/plane.git
cd plane
rm -rf node_modules
pnpm install

Run frontend locally :

You need to run the 3 apps seperatly, which is inside apps - web, admin, space

And you also need to run the api (backend) locally, which you can do using docker (only for this service)

1. Running web

Go to apps/web, then create .env

VITE_API_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8000"

VITE_WEB_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3000"

VITE_ADMIN_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3001"
VITE_ADMIN_BASE_PATH="/god-mode"

VITE_SPACE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3002"
VITE_SPACE_BASE_PATH="/spaces"

VITE_LIVE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3100"
VITE_LIVE_BASE_PATH="/live"

Open a new terminal and Run the web app using :

cd plane/apps/web
pnpm run dev

This should run the web app in http://localhost:3000

2. Running the Admin App:

in app/admin. create a .env variable

VITE_API_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8000"

VITE_WEB_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3000"

VITE_ADMIN_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3001"
VITE_ADMIN_BASE_PATH="/god-mode/"

VITE_SPACE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3002"
VITE_SPACE_BASE_PATH="/spaces"

VITE_LIVE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3100"
VITE_LIVE_BASE_PATH="/live"

and in a new terminal run :

pnpm run dev

And it should start http://localhost:3001/god-mode/

3. Running the space app:

Space :

create a .env file → apps/space/.env,

VITE_API_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8000"

VITE_WEB_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3000"

VITE_ADMIN_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3001"
VITE_ADMIN_BASE_PATH="/god-mode/"

VITE_SPACE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3002"
VITE_SPACE_BASE_PATH="/spaces"

VITE_LIVE_BASE_URL="http://localhost:3100"
VITE_LIVE_BASE_PATH="/live"

Run the space app in new terminal

cd plane/apps/space 
pnpm run dev 

4. Run Backend locally :

We can run the backend using local django setup, or use the docker compose to run our backend through docker.

Run the backend using docker :

Run the following command to run the backend

In the root directory, run the following command :

docker compose -f docker-compose-local.yml up api

The backend should be running at http://localhost:8000

This will start:

• api → Django backend
• postgres
• redis

visit http://localhost:8000

Running the app:

Once you visit the http://localhost:3000 it will show :

Once you register your super user:

Instance Admin and God Mode

Configuring Instance

Create a workspace

workspaces

You will be redirected to http://localhost:3000/your-workspace-url

Thanks, Do follow the series :)

In the next Part, we will see how to remove the plane-branding from the app (whitelabelling) to make it yours.

Stay Tuned :)