Docker Engine may be the easiest container runtime in the home lab ecosystem, but managing dozens of free and open-source services can get somewhat cumbersome when you’ve only got terminal commands. Switching to the Desktop version of Docker can help, but if you use CLI distros, virtualization platforms, and NAS systems to host containers like I do, you’ll want some kind of GUI/menu-based interface to control your containerized environments from your everyday machines.

That’s where control planes come in handy, as they offer neat UIs that you can access from any device with a web browser. Portainer ranks pretty high among these container management tools, and it’s often the one tinkerers recommend to fledgling home labbers. That said, I’ve started looking into Portainer alternatives for my NAS-based Docker stack after growing dissatisfied with Portainer’s interface and general features. While there are plenty of heavy hitters, Dockhand checks all my boxes, and having used it for more than a few weeks, I don’t regret pivoting to it one bit.

Portainer’s UI has started to feel somewhat clunky as of late

Even though I appreciate its support for Podman and K8s environment

Let me make this clear: Portainer is not a bad container management UI by any means. It can provide detailed statistics for my container suite, spin up new FOSS utilities, and control entire Docker stacks in a Swarm environment. Plus, I’d often rely on it to control my Podman instances before I moved on to Cockpit (but that’s a topic for another time).

My gripes with Portainer stem from its overly convoluted UI – one that requires me to sift through multiple menus to access a specific tool. When I want to check the resources consumed by a self-hosted tool, I’d have to find the right node from the Dashboard and search for the right service in a pool of dozens of other services in the Container tab. Likewise, if an app goes offline abruptly, I’d have to do all that, and find the bash button before I could finally run some commands.

It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, but when I need to troubleshoot errors or control stacks at odd hours, cycling between multiple menus starts to get pretty annoying. And this might just be me, but after checking out Komodo and Dockage on a whim, Portainer’s UI feels too clunky to use, especially since it tends to consume quite a lot of resources (comparatively speaking) on the host machine. And once you start comparing it to Dockhand, it lacks a couple of useful tools as well.

Dockhand is a terrific lightweight alternative to Portainer

It hides a plethora of container management tools behind a neat UI

As much as I adore Portainer’s rival tools, Dockhand is my favorite of the bunch. Its web interface features all the essential container management services, including the logs, shell, stacks, and images as the panel headers, even though it’s extremely lightweight. It also looks more organized and minimalist compared to Portainer’s interface, despite cramming a lot of information into the UI. For example, rather than just listing the operational status, date of creation, and quick action buttons as Portainer does, Dockhand’s Containers tab provides a detailed overview of the resources consumed by my self-hosted stack.

Browsing container files is just as easy on Dockhand, and it even lets me download (and upload) entire directories from my virtual environments. Although Portainer has the edge when it comes to K8s runtimes, Dockhand also supports Podman, so I can use it to control virtual environments created by this alternate container runtime. Unlike Portainer, Dockhand also supports auto-update capabilities, making container management even simpler. Heck, Dockhand can harness Grype and Trivy to scan images for vulnerabilities, which adds an extra layer of security to my Docker deployment tasks.

It pairs really well with TrueNAS

Since I’ve already got Dockhand running on multiple bare-metal and VM setups, I wanted to use it to manage the containers on my storage server as well. After all, I use the spare storage pools on my NAS to host the space-hogging FOSS tools and media archival services in my arsenal. For reference, I’ve got TrueNAS 26 powering my backup machine, and since the distro switched from a K3s backend to a Docker-based setup a few updates ago, Dockhand can directly connect to the Docker socket on my storage rig and pull all the tools I’ve installed using its built-in app templates.

In fact, Dockhand itself has a dedicated container profile in the Apps section, so I didn’t have to fiddle with YAML configs or custom deployments on TrueNAS, either. I’ve got SSH tunnels and Hawser Agents deployed on my home lab nodes, so connecting my TrueNAS-based Dockhand instance to the Docker runtimes on my servers was just as simple. Dockhand may be an underrated tool, but it’s one of the best Portainer rivals out there.