Free Portainer Business at home – Using docker with more features in homelab!

I’ve started using docker as probably a lot of you, with just a Debian or Ubuntu server with the necessary binaries to get containers running. At one point, I discovered Portainer which made container management in a homelab environment a lot easier. I though about using Kubernetes, Rancher and other options like Tanzu. But they are all quite high maintenance to run a few containers at your home. If your looking to get started with containers, and your familiar with VMware/XCP-NG/Hyper-V/Proxmox, then just deploy a Debian VM and intall docker with Portainer to get started. It’s simple and a good way to get a solid introduction to containers from a virtualization admin point of view. Introduction – Portainer Documentation

Portainer Community Edition (CE) is free, with some restrictions like updating stacks with the newest images. Portainer Business Edition (BE) provides these features, but at a cost. But when running it at home, there’s a free option of Business Edition that you can use! As it took me a while to find this, so I decided to write this up for anyone else looking for this and just haven’t stumbled across Portainers official site for this.

Take 5 – Get your first 5 nodes free (portainer.io)

So click on the link above (not an affiliate link or anything like that), and get your Free (NFR) license of Portainer for your homelab, and enjoy the flexibility of container management with advanced features :)

Complete the form and we’ll send you our fully featured commercial product, free for your first five nodes.

Business Edition includes all of the features of Community Edition, plus:

• Role Based Access Controls (RBAC)
• Authentication and Activity Audit Logging
• Enhanced Support for OAuth
• Private Registry Management
• Advanced GitOps
• Resource Management Quotas
• Automatic Backups to S3
• And more. View all Business Edition features