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Working together with other CiviCRM partners we have created a better way to host CiviCRM using a Docker image.
Hosting CiviCRM can be hard. Whilst there are many off-the-shelf hosting packages for common applications such as WordPress, CiviCRM has more specialist requirements. Hosting CiviCRM involves a degree of knowledge of system administration and server configuration that can be off-putting for first time users and challenging even for those that have been doing it for a while.
While some organisations do host CiviCRM themselves, for many organisations it makes sense to outsource the hosting to someone else - whether that is using dedicated CiviCRM hosting or the services of a CiviCRM partner. If you are in the position of hosting CiviCRM then read on. This blog is for you. For those who aren’t dealing with hosting themselves apologies for the technicalities that follow but hopefully you will still find this example of collaboration of interest.
Our approach to simplifying hosting was to create an official set of Docker images for CiviCRM. This makes CiviCRM easier to host and therefore more accessible to new users. Using Docker images is a standard approach to hosting web applications in a consistent scalable manner. You can get Docker images for most common web-based applications. Having CiviCRM listed on Docker Hub increases the visibility of the project and helps to increase the user base by making it easier to get started. It is now just a question of pulling the latest Docker image to spin up a CiviCRM site.
We have been using our own Docker image in production at Third Sector Design since 2018. We were aware that other CiviCRM partners have been doing similar but each partner had taken a different approach, not all were available on Docker Hub and it could be difficult to get started. There was also no standard ‘official’ image for CiviCRM.
The work to create a standard image for CiviCRM started in December 2023 with the #CiviOneClick project which was coordinated by Software für Engagierte. In collaboration with other partners, we created a Docker image for CiviCRM Standalone, which was first published on Docker Hub in December 2024. This has proved very successful and it has had over 100,000 downloads to date.
In October 2025 we started work on a Docker image for CiviCRM on WordPress at CiviCamp Europe in the Netherlands. We were able to create a working draft during the sprint but this needed further work to smooth off some rough edges. The good news is that this work is complete and an image for CiviCRM on WordPress is now available to pull from the Docker Hub. For more details of how you can use this see the documentation.
We would like to thank the CIviCRM core team and all of the partners who have helped to make this happen:
- Software für Engagierte
- JMA Consulting
- Tadpole Collective
- Skvare
- MJW Consulting
- Blackfly Solutions
- CiviDesk
- Progressive Technology Project
- Third Sector Design
It really has been a collaborative effort to put this together and the end result is a solid foundation for others to build on. There will no doubt be further improvements to make in future so please do get involved if you’d like to help move this forward. You can find more details in the GitHub repository or join the conversation on the docker channel in chat. Get in touch with the team at Third Sector Design if you have any questions.
