Seconding this. Big fan of Dokku on a DO droplet as an inexpensive way to make applications.

I feel like setting up Docker + Terraform might be easier? Postgres + Redis + containerized app with little effort.

Used to use Dokku but preferred Caprover because it's even less work and there's a web ui. Both are good though

Does CapRover's Web UI offer any kind of 2FA? It feels a bit scary to have the keys to the kingdom just hanging out in on a public IP address, for anyone to brute force the admin password.

It doesn't have 2FA, but it has password throttling, so brute force isn't possible

No, but that's mainly because I still have to manage the server running Dokku I believe?

edit: For context what I was already using was manual docker on a DO box. While I recognized that Dokku would make it more seamless and easier, my issue was managing and securing the DO VM itself. I didn't see how Dokku would help that scenario

I would suggest reading about Ansible and working on an initial collection of Ansible playbooks that might help on that. Check out https://www.thecloud.coach/ansible-crash-course. Of course nothing beats a dedicated devops but some playbooks regarding main security compliances might do a great job. Anyone correct me if I am wrong but I am seeing it as a good base practice for these cases.

Honestly, I think this is going in the wrong direction for OP's use-case. He definitely should go in the serverless direction.

If he learns any sort of dev-ops infra management he's just wasting his time.

Possibly. I use Serverless as well but I prefer to keep my options open when playing with a new project, than trying to force everything into the same tool. If he is lean to learn something, Ansible might be good for setting some servers up, but there are some nice other suggestions in the thread if he doesn't want to.

On DigitalOcean they have one-click setup for Dokku.

One-click for initial setup, but what about maintenance? I like DO, but those easy setups seem like a recipe for vulnerable machines. If it's complicated to maintain, it shouldn't be too easy to setup.

yep. Dokku is not as simple as heroku.

It's definitely not as simple as you have to maintain the server yourself. But being able to run multiple applications/containers on a server for the price of one dyno really makes up for it for personal projects!

If I were working on a project with a corporate budget then using Heroku or a different style of architecture like serverless would be a no-brainer