I've been hosting a lot of services on my NAS for over a year at this point, and I've played around with a lot of software to manage the Docker containers that I host on it. While I had settled on Portainer for quite a while, I recently played around with Cockpit and Podman when I turned my Steam Deck into a server. After that, I thought about Portainer alternatives, and I ended up trying out Dockge. While it's not as feature-rich as Portainer, what I found was a container management tool that meets my needs without any of the extra fluff.

Dockge isn't quite a Portainer replacement, but depending on what you use Portainer for, it might be for you as it was for me. It's built entirely around docker-compose files, managing your stacks for you and deploying anything you need under your currently installed Docker installation. On TrueNAS Scale, it's a great way to deploy your custom apps rather than using the built-in interface, and it's a quick and easy solution when you want to take a compose file someone else has made and deploy it on your machine.

Dockge makes managing apps easy

Even easier than Portainer

One major downside of Dockge making managing your apps easier is the fact that it's easy. It's easy because it's simple, and it lacks many features that you would find in the likes of Portainer. I don't particularly care about that, and most of what I deploy either has a docker-compose file readily available, or I can make one myself.

For example, Portainer has a lot of network management options, full volume controls, an event log, and it even gives you the ability to see every property of a container. Dockge has none of that, but if you're someone who considers themselves to be more of a casual user, then Dockge makes it significantly easier to deploy applications as you need them. You get a docker-compose file, copy the contents, paste it, and click deploy. That's all it takes.

For users with more advanced setups than a TrueNAS system managing their data, then Dockge probably isn't for you, or at the very least, might not offer everything that you'd want from a container manager. For example, adding additional agents to Dockge is in beta and allows you to manage multiple Docker instances on different hosts from the same interface. This is a feature that has been in Portainer for quite a while. However, for someone who just wants to deploy some applications and modify them via a compose file, Dockge fits the bill perfectly.

For example, I recently deployed my own RustDesk server using Ich777's RustDesk Server All in One Docker image. The repository lists a docker run command to start the application for the first time, but there's no compose file in either its GitHub repository or on the Docker Hub page for the image. You can easily make a compose file from a docker run command (and there are plenty of tools out there to do it), but that wasn't a problem with Dockge. On the home page, where you can also add your compose file, you can just paste a docker run command, and it will handle the conversion for you.

For some commands, this automatic process might not work perfectly, but it will do most of the legwork for you in order to deploy what you need to. I've only had to make minor tweaks after I imported a compose file through this method, which meant that I was able to get up and running super quickly.

Finally, Dockge also has the basic features you'd expect from a container manager. You can access a shell inside the container if you want to make any changes or check any files, and you can also view a log from the container or the stack of containers you've created from the web panel. This means that when you have multiple containers inside of a stack, you can see the logs from all services as they come in, and they'll have a color-coded prefix with the name of the service so that you can see clearly what logs are coming from what services.

Portainer still has a place

I just prefer Dockge

None of this is to say that Portainer is obsolete; in fact, it's far from it. If you want to do more advanced container management remotely, then Portainer should still be your go-to. The only option I would miss is the ability to create volumes from within the web UI, but I create individual datasets for most of my apps on my TrueNAS system anyway. Portainer has so many more options that I rarely ever need, and Dockge simplifies the process significantly.

To be honest, I'm still keeping Portainer installed in case I ever need it, but I haven't had to use it since I found Dockge. Maybe that'll change in the future, but right now, I don't see why I would. I've deployed several stacks already in Dockge, including my RustDesk server, which immediately worked without a hitch. There hasn't been any weirdness with networking, and it still works with my Nginx Reverse Proxy that I use with Tailscale, too.

If you're looking for something simpler than Potrainer, I highly recommend giving Dockge a try. It's pretty simple and has admittedly slowed down in updates considerably over the last few months, but the developer said on Reddit a few months ago that when they have time, they'll be able to work on it again. I've seen a number of commits in the official GitHub repository in the last few days, and the latest version number has been bumped up to 1.5. I'm not saying that you'll start seeing frequent updates with more features, but it's definitely not a dead project. Plus, even if it was, it works just fine out of the box currently.