Hostinger Docker VPS Tutorial 2026 - Step by Step

Hey, I'm Caleb and today I'll show you step by step how to set up your own Docker VPS using Hostinger. If you want to start working with Docker but don't know where to begin or you just want a quick simple way to get a VPS set up and ready to deploy apps, this video will walk you through the entire process from start to finish. We'll start by choosing a ready-made VPS template that comes with everything you need to run Docker pre-installed. From there, I'll show you how to secure your setup with a custom domain and security certificate so it's safe and easy to access. And by the end of this video, you'll have a clean, Docker ready VPS that's fully set up and ready for your first project. So, let's go ahead and get started. We'll begin by choosing a VPS plan. And right now, you can get extra 10% off any hosting or VPS plan. To get that discount, go to the link right here on screen or use the first link in the video description. That's our special partner link, and it will automatically apply the coupon code and make sure you're getting the best deal available. Once you go to that link, you'll be brought to this page here. From here, I'll click on claim deal, and that's going to bring us down to the VPS plans. For this tutorial, I'll be going with the KVM2 plan. This will give us two virtual CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM, 100 GB of NVME disc space, and 8 TB of bandwidth. This is plenty of power and room to run Docker smoothly. And if you ever need more or less performance later on, you can always upgrade or downgrade your plan later on. But for this video, I'll be going with KVM2. So here, I'll click on choose plan. Next, we can choose our billing term. By default, this is set to 24 months, which will optimize your savings and get you a free domain. You can also switch this from 24 months to 12 months and 1 month plans as well. I'd recommend going with at least the 12-month plan. This is still going to get you a lot of savings and get you that free domain. And for this video, I'll go with the 12-month plan. Right below this, you can turn on daily auto backups. This is going to back up your VPS data every single day, so it's always safe and easy to restore. For this video, I'm going to leave this turned off. Next, we can select a server location. By default, Hostinger will choose the server location with the best latency for you. So, I'm just going to leave this as default. Now, all the way down at the bottom, we need to select our operating system. Go ahead and switch this from plane OS to OS with panel. And we're going to find the Doc Ploy template here. I'll go ahead and click into this here. Now, this template is going to come with Docker, Docker Compose, and a visual interface called Doc Ploy already installed for you. This means that everything you need to start working with Docker will be ready to go automatically. Doc acts as a simple control panel for Docker. So instead of running a bunch of complex commands, you can manage your containers, images, and services from one clean dashboard. This is a very beginnerfriendly way to get comfortable with Docker's workflow. And I always recommend using Doc Ploy for beginners. From here, with the Doc Ploy template selected, let's go down and click on confirm. Now I'm going to scroll back up to the top here and make sure everything looks good. Here I can see that the coupon code is applied and that's saving us 10% off our plan. Once again, if you use the link in the description, this is going to be automatically applied to your purchase. Everything looks good here. So, I'm going to go down and click on continue to move on. Now, the next step is to create a Hostinger account if you don't have one already. Here, I'll go ahead and enter my email address. Then, I'll create a password. Then, I'll click on register. Now, on this page here, you'll need to enter your billing information and your payment information. So, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Now, I've gone ahead and entered my billing address and my payment information. So, I'm going to go to the bottom here and click on submit payment to move on. Once you're brought to this page here, click on get started. Next, we'll need to create a root password for our server. There's also an option here to add an SSH key, but for this video, I'll just be going with the root password. I'll go ahead and enter my password here. With that filled out, I'll go down and click on next. Here, there's an option to add an additional free malware scanner. When I'm setting up my VPS, I like to turn this off though, just to make sure I'm getting a nice clean install. With that done, I'll click on finish setup. And now our VPS is going to be set up for us. This will take a few minutes to complete. So, I'm going to fast forward to whenever it's done, and I'll meet you at the next step. And with that done, our VPS is now ready. From here, you can copy down your SSH key. You're able to claim your free.cloud domain. And to get to your VPS dashboard, you can click on manage VPS. I'll go ahead and click on this now. And here we are. or this is your VPS dashboard. The first thing here that I like to do is take note of my server's IP address. You're able to see it right here. I'm going to copy this down because we'll need it a little bit later on in the video, but it's always available here in your dashboard if you need to come back and find it. Next, we're going to make sure that our VPS is fully updated. Up in the top right, I'm going to find the terminal. I'll go ahead and click into this here, and this will open up Hostinger's built-in browser terminal. This is just a simple command window where we can talk directly to our server. To update everything on our VPS and make sure everything is running on the latest version, we're going to run a quick command. I'll have this command available in the video description, but I'll go ahead and type it out here. pseudo apt update. Then we're going to do two and signs. Then we'll type pseudoapp upgrade dashy. With that entered, press enter or return on your keyboard. And that's going to run the update and install command. We're going to give this a few moments here to update and make sure that everything is running on the latest version. Now, with that done, your VPS is now up to date and ready for the next step. From here, we can now close out of the browser terminal tab. I'll go to the top and close out of this here. And now we're back in our VPS dashboard. Now, the next step is to open up docloy. Again, this is the control panel that will manage everything running inside Docker on our server. Since we selected the Docker and Docloy template earlier when we were signing up, both are already installed and working together in the background of our VPS. To access docloy, let's go to the top right here and click on manage panel. This will open up the docloy setup screen where we can finish up our initial setup. We'll start by creating an account. I'm going to fill out my information here. And with that information filled out, I'm going to go down and click on register. And once you create your account, you'll land here on the dockploy dashboard. This is the main control panel for everything running inside Docker on your server. Your containers, your services, your projects, and all of your server settings live here. On the lefth hand side, you'll notice some options and navigation here. And depending on when you're watching this video, you may also see an update notification here at the bottom. If you see an update available, it's a good idea to install it so Doc stays on the latest version. Since there's an update available for me, I'm going to click on update available. Then I'll click on update server and confirm. And now we're going to wait for the update to finish. And with that done, Doc has now been updated. And now with the update finished, the next thing I want to point out is up here in the browser tab. You'll notice at the top that it says not secure. That's because our Docplay admin panel is still running on the server's raw IP address. It's not connected to a real domain and it doesn't have a security certificate yet. To fix that and to make sure our login and data stay private while we're managing Docker, we're going to connect this panel to an actual domain. And we can do all of that through the Hostinger dashboard. So, I'm going to switch back over to my Hostinger VPS control panel here. Then I'll go to domains on the lefth hand side and click into this here. Then I'll go to domain portfolio. Since my VPS plan includes a free domain, I'm going to go ahead and claim that here. I'll go to the right hand side and click on claim domain. Then I'll search for a domain name here. I'll go with dockervps demo and that's going to end incloud. I'll click check availability. As you can see that domain is available. So I'll click on claim domain. This is going to register that domain to me. And to start using our domain, we're going to have to verify this through our email address. Once you claim your free domain and the registration process is over, you'll get an email like this. All you have to do here is click on verify email. Then I'll click on confirm. And now our domain has been verified and it's available to be used. Okay. And now that we've verified and claimed our domain, I'm going to go back to this page here and click on continue. From here, I'll click on skip. Then on the lefth hand side, I'm going to go to DNS and name servers. Then I'm going to scroll down and find my DNS records here. Whenever you get a new domain, there's going to be a couple of default DNS records that we'll need to delete. The first one is at the top here and you'll see it's labeled CNAME. And then all the way at the bottom you'll find a default A record. We don't want to keep these because we're hosting everything on our own VPS. So if we leave the default records here, our domain won't know where to send traffic. So to make sure everything is running smoothly, we're going to delete these two records. So I'll start by deleting the A record at the bottom. I'll click delete here. Then I'm going to scroll back up to the top and find that default CNAME record here. And I'll delete this as well. And now with that done, we're going to add in our own records that point directly to our VPS. First, I'm going to add in a new A record. For the name, I'm going to leave this as the at symbol. And then for the value, I'm going to paste in my VPS IP address. If you remember a little bit earlier on in the video, I mentioned to write down or copy your VPS IP address. And if you need to find that, you can go back to your VPS dashboard and find it there. Then for the TTL, I'm going to change this to 300. This is just going to make sure that this change reflects on our domain faster. With that done, I'll click add record. Now, we've added in our first new DNS record. Now, for the next record, we're going to change the name from the at symbol to www. Then, we'll leave all of the other settings the same. Once again, click on add record, then click on confirm. Now, we've added in our second DNS record. Now, we're going to add in one more A record, but change the name from www to admin. This is the domain that will point specifically to our docloy dashboard. And you're essentially creating a subdomain from your main domain here. So to access my docloy admin dashboard, in my case, I'll type in admin.docckervps demo.cloud. That way I can easily access my docloy admin control panel at any time. With that done, let's go and click on add record and confirm again. Now we've added in our third and final DNS record. Now, we've added in all of these DNS records, but this process can take a little bit of time to work in the background. So, don't be discouraged if it takes a little bit of extra time for the changes to reflect on your domain. And now, our domain knows exactly where our VPS is, but we're only halfway done. We still have to tell Doc Ploy what domain it needs to use for its admin panel. And doing that is what's going to let us issue the security certificate and make the dashboard fully secure. So, now I'm going to go ahead and switch back to Doc Ploy. I'll go to the top and go to my docu tab. Then I'll click on web server. And here I can enter my domain. In my case here, I'll type in admin.docervpsdemo.cloud. [Music] And in your case, you'll enter your own domain here. For the Let's Encrypt email, you can choose any email address that you want. And here we're going to toggle on our SSL certificate. I'll toggle this on here. And for the certificate provider, make sure you have let's encrypt selected. With all of that done, let's click on save. And now that new domain has been assigned. And now, if you look at the top, you can see it still says not secure. So, we'll need to create a new tab and make sure that the assigned domain that we chose is properly working. To do this, I'm going to copy this domain and open up a new tab. And I'll paste in the domain here. Press enter on my keyboard. And now if I go into the site settings, you'll see that the connection is now secure. From here, all you have to do is sign in to your docploy account. I'll click on log in. Now our docploy admin control panel is 100% secure. And now that everything is connected and secure, we can create our first project in docploy. To create a project, I'll go to the top right here and click on create project. I'll start by giving my project a name. I'll name this dockervp setup. You can add a description if you'd like to. From here, I'll click on create. And now we've created our first project. A project in Doc Ploy is basically your workspace. It's where you'll organize anything you deploy. To create a service, go to the top right and click on create service. And here you can create an application, a database. You can use Docker Compose, use templates, and AI assistance. And all of these will operate within your project in this single shared space. And now you have a hostingervp running Docker with Dockpoint installed and secured with your own domain. And you have a project space ready for your first deployment. At this point, your server is clean, configured, and ready to start hosting real applications. And don't forget, if you want to save an extra 10% off any hosting or VPS plan, make sure you use the first link in the video description. That will make sure you're getting the best available deal. Now, if you want to learn how to actually deploy a real web app, connect your Docplay account to GitHub, link a database, and even add analytics tracking, I've made a full step-by-step tutorial that picks up right where we're leaving off in this video. You can click the video on screen now or find the link in the description to watch that next. Thank you for watching this video. I really hope it helped you out. And with that said, I'll see you in the next