Run ExperimentLab
on your infrastructure.

Prepare a Linux host

You need Docker Engine with the Compose plugin, a publicly reachable application URL for hosted SDK clients, and persistent disk for PostgreSQL and Redis volumes. Put TLS termination in front of port 3005 for production.

Copy the environment template

Keep .env private. It contains database and application secrets and must not be committed to Git.

git clone https://github.com/ignatius22/experimentlab.git
cd experimentlab
cp .env.example .env

Set production values

Use a new 64-character AUTH_SECRET, a strong database password, and your real public URL. Generate the secret in your terminal, then paste its output into .env; environment files do not run shell commands.

openssl rand -hex 32

POSTGRES_PASSWORD="use-a-strong-password"
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://experiment_user:use-a-strong-password@postgres:5432/experimentlab_db?schema=public"
AUTH_SECRET="paste-a-generated-64-character-secret-here"
REDIS_URL="redis://redis:6379"
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL="https://flags.example.com"

Enable billing on your own instance (optional)

Only add these variables if you operate a hosted service and want to charge your own customers through Paystack. Leaving them unset runs ExperimentLab as a community-only instance: checkout, subscription management, and Paystack webhooks stay disabled.

# Optional: enable Team-plan billing on your own instance
PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY="sk_..."
PAYSTACK_PUBLIC_KEY="pk_..."
PAYSTACK_TEAM_PLAN_CODE="PLN_..."

Start the stack

The web service listens on host port 3005. Redis buffers event ingestion and the worker flushes queued events to PostgreSQL.

docker compose up -d --build
docker compose ps