All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Free Self-Hosted WordPress on Your Own VPS - Single Server by PanelAlpha [Beta]
ModulesGarden
Member
The Single Server edition by PanelAlpha, currently in beta, is a completely new, free way to run WordPress on your infrastructure, removing much of the complexity people have been working around for years.
What exactly is Single Server?
At its core, this is a fully self-hosted setup running directly on your own VPS, without relying on external services, legacy control panels, or additional SaaS layers.
The idea is to simplify the hosting experience while keeping full control over infrastructure and day-to-day operations - something that, until now, has usually required stitching together multiple tools (and fees).
PanelAlpha itself has been evolving for years as a WordPress-focused control panel used by hosting providers and agencies, and Single Server looks like a more direct, streamlined version of that approach.
What sets it apart from what we're used to
- Fully self-hosted environment on a single VPS
- No vendor lock-in or added SaaS costs
- Built-in migrations with instant preview before DNS changes
- Tooling focused specifically on WordPress workflows
- Easy collaboration without full server-level access
- A Docker-based engine with proven performance
What also stands out here is that Single Server is free for smaller setups, with plans to support running up to three sites per server at no cost. That's a very different starting point compared to the usual model of stacked subscriptions and ever-growing monthly costs, and it could open the door for a lot of use cases that were simply not practical before.
Does this address a real demand in the industry?
Do you think a setup like this - self-hosted, VPS-based, and without the usual layers - has a real chance to catch on? Would you consider using something like this instead of what you're running today?
If you'd like to get a better sense of Single Server before joining the discussion, you can now explore it on your own VPS and let it handle real projects as part of the ongoing beta testing.
Comments
Good to know.
is this single server license will stay free, or after beta it will cost 29 / month
As @lovelyserver already brought up, Single Server will stay free for self-use, even after it moves out of beta.
How is your panel different than others really?
Several panels do what you offer within their free limits which has no issue
The main difference comes down to how they're structured. Most of those panels start from the server side and then layer WordPress on top, while PanelAlpha approaches it the other way around, starting from WordPress itself and building the environment around it.
At the end of the day it still runs on your own VPS, just without having to adapt a general-purpose setup to fit that use case. Features like migration previews before changing DNS or easy collaboration (without full server access) are already built in and ready to use.
It is wonderful that the free license it will always be free.
I was pointing out that the free license has a limit of 3 sites.
Do you plan to offer a LET promotional license?
I’m not sold
The PanelAlpha team will share more details around pricing, plans, and possible promotions as the project gets closer to a stable release.
@DrNutella
On a test server, when idle, it uses around ~25% RAM and ~2% CPU.
Do you have any specific changes in mind? It's a bit hard to generalize here - some edits are detected, others might not be.
If you uninstall the panel, the configs it manages are removed with it.
There's no config export option at the moment.
There's a Diagnostic Mode you can run on a broken WordPress instance, which helps point to where the issue is.
Still early (beta), so some of this will likely evolve, but that's how it works right now.
That's a strange way to specify resources.
So if I have a server with 512G ram, the panel will take ~128G of ram?
Fair point. Those numbers come from a specific test environment on a 4GB RAM server.
Do you have a remote backup option? I couldn't find any remote backup on your demo panel or in the documentation. This documentation URL says 404 not found!
Remote backups aren't part of the current beta yet, but they're on the roadmap for Single Server as it moves closer to a production-ready release. More details on that will come a bit later.
As for the documentation, apologies for the confusion. Most links have been updated after expanding PanelAlpha into two editions. At the moment, you can find more information about remote backups here: https://www.panelalpha.com/documentation/multi-server/system-configuration/remote-backups/
I am not going to use this just because it uses ioncube,
If you want code security use a language which doesn't ships raw code , but dont use shit encoders
so alpha is actually beta? what comes next?
In this case, the "alpha" is more about being solid than early stage, as PanelAlpha has been around in a stable form for a couple of years now. What's currently in beta is just the Single Server edition, a new direction PanelAlpha is testing more openly before it becomes a regular part of the platform.
As for what's next? It will continue to evolve based on real feedback, and the plan is to keep the free access model in place on the same terms even beyond the beta.
Yeah this actually hits a real pain point people are tired of stacking 5 tools just to run WordPress, so a clean all-in-one on your own VPS is pretty appealing if it’s stable
That's pretty much exactly the problem Single Server is trying to solve. We'll keep everyone posted as it gets closer to a stable release, but if you're curious, the beta is already live and open to test in real scenarios: https://www.panelalpha.com/self-hosted-wordpress