Deploying a Docker Compose stack to a Vultr VPS with Nginx and HTTPS

You have a Flask frontend, a FastAPI backend, a Redis instance and a Celery worker, all wired together with Docker Compose. It works on your laptop. Now it needs to work on the internet, where nobody will forgive a missing environment variable.

Managed services such as Google Cloud Run are simpler. Sometimes you want more control, a predictable base server cost, or you simply enjoy getting your hands dirty with server administration. That is where a Virtual Private Server (VPS) such as Vultr comes in.

A VPS deployment is a single-host production setup where you own the whole stack (operating system, container runtime, reverse proxy and TLS certificates) in exchange for a fixed monthly base price rather than per-request billing. Storage, backups and bandwidth can still add to the bill. The limits are real too: one server means one point of failure, and updates cause a brief outage. I will say where that matters as we go.

This post takes a complete example from a blank Vultr server to HTTPS, with Nginx as the reverse proxy and Certbot with Let’s Encrypt for certificates. I wrote it after deploying another app to Vultr, and the docker group trap in Step 3 comes straight from my own deployment notes.

Prerequisites

1. A Vultr account: If you do not have one, sign up at Vultr.
2. A domain name: Registered with a provider such as GoDaddy.
3. An SSH client: For Windows, PuTTY or Git Bash; for macOS and Linux, your built-in terminal.
4. Git: Installed on your local machine.
5. Your project in a Git repository: GitHub or similar, reachable from the server. The example below is small enough to type in yourself.

Throughout, I use one Ubuntu version, 22.04.5 LTS, because it is the one I have actually run this on, so every command in the post matches a single tested environment. Standard support for 22.04 ends in April 2027, so for a brand-new server you may prefer 24.04 LTS. Docker’s installation page lists 24.04 and 26.04 as supported too, and the steps should carry over, but I have not followed this post on them.

The example project: Flask, FastAPI, Redis and Celery

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Deployment walkthrough: from blank VPS to HTTPS

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Verification: what success looks like at each layer

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Operations: logs, resources, backups, updates and troubleshooting

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Production hardening, briefly

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Pre-launch checklist for a Docker Compose VPS

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Final thoughts

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References

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