I often see people mention the Portainer project and how it’s useful, but I never hear any reason to use it other than as a more user friendly front end to service management.

So is there any particular feature or reason to use portainer over docker’s CLI? Or is it simply a method of convenience?

This isn’t only strictly for self hosting, but I figure people here would know better.

  • MajorHavocEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    If Portainer implements OCI correctly, like Docker and Podman, you shouldn’t see any difference in CLI functionality.

    There’s differences in the installers, but once installed, one OCI compliant tool is like another.

    Be aware that both Docker and Portainer are both partly proprietary solutions with restricted licenses.

    If I need an enterprise service with response service level agreements, they might be the right fit, at the right price.

    For everything else, I use Podman, which is actually open source. (Enterprise support can also be purchased for it from RedHat, though last I checked it was bundled into other stuff rather than a separate additional cost.)

    Edit: Oh, crap. I didn’t realize where I was. I could answer more simply, here: there’s no way in hell would I use Docker or Portainer for my self hosted stuff. I solely use Podman for self hosting. My time on earth is too short to care whether Docker is going to change their license again.