I already have a server for one of my communities, using Hetzner Cloud. Since I’m just starting out, there’s not enough traffic yet and even when it starts growing, the initial traffic will not be enough that justifies 2 servers. I wanted to spend some time building the community without having to spend extra money, if I don’t have to, especially because I don’t even know when it really justifies 2 servers. Even at a low price of $5 a month, if it takes me 10 months to get to a point where the traffic justifies a separate server, that’s $50 that I could save and use for something else. Can I use a single server for 2 Discourse installations? I’m thinking that maybe there’s some conflict because of the IP, but since I’m not an expert, I don’t know the options? Any tips? Thanks!

Yes you can, that’s called multisite: [image] Multisite configuration with Docker Self-Hosting warning While multisite is supported in the Discourse application, this is an advanced sysadmin setup. If you don’t know what you’re doing, do not set up multisite. The Discourse team is unable to provide multisite configuration support. If you wish to host multiple domains on a singled Docker setup, you’ll need a multisite configuration. Here are the basic building blocks for one. Understand hooks Multisite is a fairly advanced topic. Before attempting a multisite build, spend some time…

Great! Thank you for sharing the link. It seems a bit complex, but I’m sure that following the instructions and asking some questions to ChatGPT and Claude along the way to clarify some stuff, along with asking questions here on the forum, will allow me to achieve this. Since this is just an experiment while I still have no users, even if something goes wrong, it’s not a big deal, as long as I have a full back up, which I always do. Questions: The instructions assume that I’m installing 2 or more at the same time, or can I follow the instructions to add an extra Discourse instance “next” to the current community? If in the future I then want to move to separate servers, will it be possible and “easy” to migrate without major/complex steps?

Migration might be trickier, I think you’d probably need to take a backup of both sites and then repeat the same steps. I’m not sure if rsync will work here. UPDATE: @alltiagocom By how the docs is phrased, I think you can add more than 2 sites: [image]Multisite configuration with Docker The above sample can be extended to provision even more DBs. To do so, provision more DBs by duplicating the create db etc calls, and make sure you add additional sites in multisite.yml.

Oh ok. I didn’t know that… Thanks for letting me know. This community really is a good source of help, and if saving $ puts me in a category where I may “break” that connection in some areas, I should consider if that’s the route or not…?

I’m really wondering if that’s a good route, with all the extra “quirks” and then not being able to maybe get help in certain areas, because then my configuration will be very specific? I need to think this through. At this point I do have at least 4 communities that could be created and that would be $20 a month. So I either take a chance with just one server, or I wait until it makes sense to really have all communities up and running and pay for separate servers.

Discourse multisite is very well tested, unless you have some customisations in place, there are seasoned people here who will be able to help with it. That being said, with a bit of perseverance you can set up two standalone discourse installs on same server too if need be.

I would suggest not mounting more than 2 on one server. @itsbhanusharma Do you know if there are performance impacts on more than that?

The only customization is really just the stuff we all talk about here. Components, plugins, etc. Nothing fancy. My goal was to really just being able to have separate communities asap, instead of waiting months to set them up separately. And of course, if I would pay $5 a month for 4 small communities instead of $20, that would be even better. Then gradually move one or more of those to their own servers.

[image] NateDhaliwal: I would suggest not mounting more than 2 on one server. Even if at the moment there’s no traffic at all, other than myself? Or when users start joining, but it’s maybe like 10 on each community?

One server for 2 Discourse communities?

Product Support Self-hosting

Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin) January 5, 2026, 11:44am 4

It’s mentioned in the excerpt, but worth emphasizing: be aware that enabling multisite puts your installation in unsupported-install, which means developers and the community may be less willing to help with issues.

Topic		Replies	Views
Success - New Multisite Install on Dedicated server using ServerPilot, Nginx and Apache Self-hosting	22	10284	July 28, 2020
Multiple app containers for a single Discourse site Self-hosting hosting	5	310	January 19, 2026
Setup Multisite Configuration with Let's Encrypt and no Reverse Proxy Sysadmins how-to , domains	24	5131	August 27, 2026
Will we ever be able to install Discourse on shared servers? Self-hosting	55	9027	June 16, 2018
Multiple discourse instances in a single server Product Support	5	4898	May 30, 2018

One server for 2 Discourse communities?

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