Self-Hosting Miru: A Complete Guide for Teams That Own Their Data

Self-Hosting Miru: A Complete Guide for Teams That Own Their Data is straightforward once you stop adding process theater.

Step-by-step guide to deploying Miru on your own infrastructure. Docker, bare metal, or cloud — your servers, your rules. We write from operating experience, not trend-chasing.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you need:

• A server — Any Linux box with 2GB+ RAM. A $12/month VPS from Hetzner, DigitalOcean, or Linode works fine. AWS, GCP, and Azure all work too, just cost more.
• Docker and Docker Compose — The easiest path. We’ll cover bare metal later, but Docker is the recommended approach.
• A domain name — Something like time.yourcompany.com. You’ll need DNS access to point it at your server.
• SMTP credentials — For sending invoice emails. Any provider: SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, or your company’s SMTP server.
• Stripe account (optional) — Only if you want online invoice payments. Miru works fine without it.

Docker Quickstart: Five Minutes to Running

SSH into your server and create a project directory:

mkdir -p /opt/miru && cd /opt/miru

Create a docker-compose.yml:

version: "3.8"

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: miru
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: miru_production
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U miru"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5

  web:
    image: saeloun/miru-web:latest
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    env_file:
      - .env
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://miru:${DB_PASSWORD}@db:5432/miru_production

volumes:
  postgres_data:

Create your .env file:

# Database
DB_PASSWORD=your-strong-password-here

# Application
SECRET_KEY_BASE=generate-with-openssl-rand-hex-64
RAILS_ENV=production
APP_HOST=time.yourcompany.com

# Email (example with SendGrid)
SMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.sendgrid.net
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=apikey
SMTP_PASSWORD=your-sendgrid-api-key
SMTP_SENDER=billing@yourcompany.com

# Stripe (optional)
STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=pk_live_...
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_live_...
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_...

Generate your secret key:

openssl rand -hex 64

Paste the output as your SECRET_KEY_BASE.

Start everything:

docker compose up -d
docker compose exec web rails db:create db:migrate db:seed

Miru is now running on port 3000. Visit http://your-server-ip:3000 to confirm it’s alive.

Setting Up SSL with Let’s Encrypt

Running a billing tool over HTTP is not acceptable. Here’s the quick Nginx + Certbot setup:

apt update && apt install -y nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/miru:

server {
    server_name time.yourcompany.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Enable the site and get your certificate:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/miru /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx
certbot --nginx -d time.yourcompany.com

Certbot handles the SSL configuration and auto-renewal. Your Miru instance is now running at https://time.yourcompany.com.

Configuring Stripe for Online Payments

If you want clients to pay invoices online:

1. Create a Stripe account at stripe.com
2. Grab your live API keys from the Stripe Dashboard
3. Set up a webhook endpoint pointing to https://time.yourcompany.com/api/webhooks/stripe
4. Subscribe to these events: payment_intent.succeeded, payment_intent.payment_failed, invoice.paid
5. Copy the webhook signing secret
6. Add all three values to your .env file and restart:

docker compose restart web

Invoices sent from Miru will now include a “Pay Now” button that processes payments through your Stripe account. The money goes directly to you. Miru never touches your funds.

Bare Metal Installation

If you prefer running without Docker:

# System dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian)
apt update && apt install -y build-essential libpq-dev nodejs npm \
  ruby-full postgresql postgresql-contrib

# Install Ruby 3.3+ via rbenv or asdf
# Install Node 20+ via nvm or asdf

# Clone and set up
git clone https://github.com/saeloun/miru-web.git /opt/miru
cd /opt/miru
bundle install
npm install

# Create database
createuser -s miru
createdb -O miru miru_production

# Configure (copy and edit)
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your production values

# Migrate and start
RAILS_ENV=production rails db:migrate db:seed
RAILS_ENV=production rails assets:precompile
RAILS_ENV=production rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000

For production, put this behind a process manager like systemd and Nginx as a reverse proxy.

Backups: The Part Everyone Skips

Don’t skip this. Your billing data is your business history.

# Automated daily backup via cron
0 3 * * * docker compose -f /opt/miru/docker-compose.yml exec -T db \
  pg_dump -U miru miru_production | gzip > /backups/miru-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).sql.gz

Test your restore process. A backup you’ve never restored is a backup that doesn’t exist.

gunzip < /backups/miru-20260314.sql.gz | \
  docker compose exec -T db psql -U miru miru_production

Updating Miru

When a new version ships:

cd /opt/miru
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
docker compose exec web rails db:migrate

Three commands. Under a minute. Zero downtime for most updates.

Your Servers, Your Rules

Self-hosting Miru means your time data, client information, and invoice history never leave your infrastructure. No third-party subprocessors. No data sharing. No “we updated our privacy policy” emails. Your servers, your rules.

Need help? The GitHub Discussions are active. The community has deployed Miru on everything from Raspberry Pis to AWS ECS clusters. Whatever your setup, someone’s probably done it before.

Why we chose Rails 8 + React 18 →

Hard Stop

Run this loop for two weeks without skipping cleanup. The compounding effect is real.

Start with Miru or read the docs.

Vipul A M

Co-founder at Saeloun. Building Miru. Rails contributor. Shipping from Pune, India.