Containers

A site can run your project instead of serving its files: a Node.js app and a MySQL database, declared in one small compose file, with Sitebin in front as the reverse proxy — the site's own address and your custom domains included.

How it works

1. Put a sitebin-container-compose.yaml in the site's root folder.
2. Upload your app into the folder a service mounts — each root folder of the site is a volume.
3. Switch the site to Container on its edit page (or PUT {"mode":"container"}).

From then on, every change to the compose file restarts the project — however it arrives: the edit page, the in-browser editor, a ZIP, WebDAV, FTP, the API or an agent through MCP.

The compose file

It looks like Docker Compose, cut down to what a site needs:

services:
  app:
    image: alpine-node-22
    environment:
      NODE_ENV: production
      DB_HOST: db
      DB_PORT: 3306
      DB_USER: appuser
      DB_PASSWORD: apppassword
      DB_NAME: appdb
    volumes:
      - app:/usr/src/app          # the site's root folder "app"
    domains:
      - "*:3000"                  # the site's own address -> port 3000
      - "shop.example.com:3001"   # a custom domain -> port 3001
    egress: allowed               # may reach the internet (default: denied)
    depends_on: [db]

  db:
    image: mysql-8.4
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: rootpassword
      MYSQL_DATABASE: appdb
      MYSQL_USER: appuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: apppassword
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql

Any other key is an error that names it, shown on the edit page — so a ports: copied from another project tells you it does nothing instead of silently doing nothing.

Networking

• Services of one site share a private network and reach each other by service name — db:3306 above. Sites never share a network.
• Without egress: allowed a service cannot reach the internet at all.
• Sitebin reverse-proxies each domains entry to its port, with TLS, WebSockets and the site's view password, if it has one. /_sitebin/* stays Sitebin's on every site address.
• A site in Container mode is never served from its files: its folders hold the database, and the compose file holds passwords. A stopped project answers 503; a host no service is mapped to answers 404.

The images

alpine-node-22 runs npm start in the first mounted folder. If there is no node_modules yet, it runs npm install first — which needs egress: allowed; for an offline service, upload node_modules with the app. With no package.json it runs node index.js. Set command to run anything else.

mysql-8.4 is the official image, tuned to fit the container's memory. Mount a folder at /var/lib/mysql to keep the data — without one, the data lives in memory and is gone on the next restart.

Limits

• Containers: your plan caps the running services across all your sites — every service in every started project counts. A project that would go over is not started, and the edit page says by how much.
• Memory, CPU, processes: fixed per container by the instance (on the hosted service: 512 MB, half a CPU, 256 processes). You do not choose them.
• Storage: everything the containers write counts against the site's storage. A project that grows past it is stopped — never deleted; free some space and press Start. The per-site file count does not apply in Container mode (node_modules alone would break it).
• Plan changes: when a plan ends or shrinks, projects over the new cap are stopped, newest first. Their files stay.

Running it

The edit page shows every service with its state, image, volumes and mappings — including the DNS record a custom domain still needs — plus Start, Stop, Restart and each service's recent log. The custom-domain editor is replaced by the mappings: the compose file is where domains are declared.

# switch a site to Container mode
curl -X PUT -H "X-Edit-Password: $PW" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"mode":"container"}' https://app.sitebin.io/api/sites/$EDIT_ID

# start / stop / restart (202; the site document comes back with container.status)
curl -X POST -H "X-Edit-Password: $PW" https://app.sitebin.io/api/sites/$EDIT_ID/containers/restart

# the last lines a service wrote
curl -H "X-Edit-Password: $PW" "https://app.sitebin.io/api/sites/$EDIT_ID/containers/app/logs?tail=200"

An account API token works in place of the edit password, as on every site endpoint. Switching back to Web server stops the project and serves the folders as files again.

Self-hosting

Container sites need the Enterprise edition in tiers mode, SITEBIN_CONTAINERS=docker, the Docker Engine's socket (Docker 26 or newer) and a max_containers value on the tiers that may use them. The full list of settings is in Configuration, and the security notes in Operations & security.

services:
  sitebin:
    image: sitebin:latest-ee
    group_add: ["988"]     # the gid that owns /var/run/docker.sock on the host
    volumes:
      - sitebin-data:/data
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    environment:
      SITEBIN_ACCOUNT_MODE: tiers
      SITEBIN_CONTAINERS: docker