Frequently asked questions

Dargo is a personal mini-server you own. It lives in your home or office, plugs into a regular outlet, and gives you a private place to run web apps — blogs, file storage, photo libraries, forums, automations — without sending your data to someone else's cloud. You manage it through a portal at my.dargo.net.

Install apps from our App Store with one click and use them like you'd use any SaaS — except they run on your hardware. Common ones:

• Ghost / WordPress — host your own blog or website
• Nextcloud — files, photos, calendar, contacts (your own Dropbox/iCloud)
• Discourse / Rocket.Chat — forum / team chat
• Plausible — privacy-friendly web analytics
• n8n — workflow automations
• … browse the full catalog

Three real differences:

• You own the hardware. One-time price, no monthly bill, no surprise charges. A VPS bills you every month forever.
• Your data lives at your address. Not in someone else's data center. That matters for privacy, for ownership, and for what happens if a cloud provider ever decides to lock your account.
• You don't have to be a sysadmin. Dargo handles tunnels, HTTPS, domain routing, app installs. A VPS expects you to set all of that up yourself.

People who want their own private versions of services they currently get from Big Tech — a business website, an ecommerce store, a personal blog, a notes app, a photo backup, a forum for their community — without the monthly bills, the lock-in, or the privacy tradeoffs. You don't need to be a developer; if you can plug in a router, you can run Dargo.

Most of the apps in the App Store are open source — that's a deliberate choice; we want you to be able to move off Dargo any time without losing your data or your work. The Dargo agent and system aren't open source.

A preconfigured Dargo Mini Server — an industrial-grade compute module on a custom Dargo I/O board, in a small quiet enclosure, with SSD storage. We sell it across a matrix of RAM and SSD configurations from 2 GB to 16 GB RAM and 128 GB to 2 TB SSD. Browse the full lineup on the Store page.

Single-digit watts at idle, low double-digits under load. Roughly the same as leaving a phone charger plugged in. You can leave it running 24/7 without thinking about your electricity bill.

No. There's no spinning disk and the enclosure is designed for passive or near-silent cooling. It will sit happily in a living room or bedroom.

It depends on what you're storing. A blog or two: 128 GB is plenty. A Nextcloud-style file vault for a family: 512 GB or 1 TB is more comfortable. Photo libraries that grow over years: pick the largest SSD. SSDs are not user-serviceable at this time — we may make that available in a future hardware revision, so pick the capacity you're comfortable with at the time of purchase.

Every app on Dargo stores its data in Docker volumes you can snapshot. We may make first-party backup tooling available in a future version — for now, app-level backups (e.g. Nextcloud's built-in backup, Ghost's export) are the recommended path.

Yes — power supply, Ethernet cable, quick-start card. Plug it into your network and your outlet and you're ready to claim it in the portal.

About 5 minutes from opening the box. Plug in, scan the QR code on the quick-start card, sign in at my.dargo.net, claim the device. Done — installing your first app is another click.

No. The whole product is built around "plug in, click install." If you've ever set up a router or a smart speaker you have more than enough technical experience.

No. Dargo connects out to our edge through an encrypted tunnel — your home IP is never exposed and you never touch your router's port-forwarding screen. Works on any home internet, cellular hotspot, or any network that allows outbound HTTPS.

No. The tunnel handles dynamic IPs natively — no DDNS or similar configuration required. Your ISP IP is never exposed to your visitors.

Your apps go offline until your internet comes back. They auto-reconnect within seconds when the link returns. Visitors hitting your subdomain during the outage see a friendly "device unavailable" page rather than a generic browser error.

If your home internet is unstable and you want to minimise the visible impact of short outages, you can put a custom domain behind Cloudflare's Always Online — Cloudflare serves a cached copy of the page while your device is unreachable, so visitors still see content instead of an error.

Yes — unplug, take it with you, plug back in wherever there's internet and an outlet. No reconfiguration needed; the tunnel reconnects automatically. Visiting your apps while it's in transit will show the "device unavailable" page.

65+ self-hosted apps across blogging, file storage, communication, productivity, automation, analytics, and more. See the full catalog. We add new apps regularly — there's a "Made by Dargo" badge on apps we built ourselves (Dlink, IGbot) and an "Open Source" badge on third-party apps we package.

Two paths. If you just want to run the app yourself, enable Developer mode and upload a custom Docker app — it'll be private to your account but installs the same way as anything in the App Store. If you'd like the app added to the public catalog so anyone can install it, open a support ticket from inside the portal with the project link; we review every suggestion and package the ones that fit (actively-maintained Docker image, no host filesystem mounts).

Yes, via Developer mode. Flip the switch in Settings, upload your own docker-compose.yml through the Develop page, and Dargo installs it like any other AppStore app — same tunnels, same HTTPS, same lifecycle (start / stop / update). Read the developer guide.

Yes. Pick any open-source web app off GitHub (browse awesome-selfhosted for ideas), ask an AI chatbot like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini to write the Docker setup, push the resulting image to GitHub Container Registry (free, comes with your GitHub account), and install it on Dargo through Developer mode's Custom App upload. No Docker experience required — the AI does the heavy lifting and you debug by pasting error messages back into the chat.

Read the full beginner-friendly guide →

Sign in to my.dargo.net, open the AppStore tab, click Install on the app, pick the device you want it on, then pick a subdomain or custom domain. The whole process takes about a minute; some apps need 2-10 minutes for first-boot setup.

Yes. Every install gets either a free *.mydargo.com subdomain (e.g. blog.mydargo.com, files.mydargo.com) or a custom domain you point at the device. HTTPS certificates are auto-issued for both.

As many as your hardware can comfortably handle. A 4 GB device runs 4-6 typical apps in parallel without breaking a sweat; an 8 GB device handles 10+.

Credentials (admin password, API keys, etc.) are preserved across reinstalls so a fresh install lands you back at your old admin account. App data living in Docker volumes is wiped on uninstall by default — back up first if you want to keep it.

Yes — every installed app has a per-app Dargo Access toggle (the shield icon in the top-right corner of the app card in your portal). When it's on, anyone visiting the app's URL is intercepted by a network-level gate that asks for their email, sends a 6-digit code, and only lets them through if they're on the allowlist you set. Verified visitors stay signed in for a session length you pick (default 30 days).

The allowlist supports full addresses (alice@example.com) and domain wildcards (@your-company.com). It works for both *.mydargo.com subdomains and custom domains, with no changes needed on the app itself. PIN emails count toward your monthly transactional-email budget like any other Dargo send.

Read the full Dargo Access guide →

"Bring Your Own Device" — instead of buying our hardware, you install the Dargo system on a Linux machine you already own (a spare desktop computer or laptop, a homelab box, or even a Raspberry Pi sitting in a drawer). The portal sees your machine the same way it sees a Dargo Mini Server. Read the BYOD overview.

Anything Linux x86_64 or arm64 with Docker + systemd. 2 GB RAM minimum, 16 GB+ disk recommended. Works on most desktop computers, laptops, mini-PCs, NUC-class boxes, NAS appliances, and Raspberry Pi 4 / 5. Full system requirements on the BYOD page.

We want to onboard BYOD users at a pace where we can actually help if something on their end goes sideways — different distros, different kernels, weird network setups. Manual review of every application is how we keep that pace sane during the beta. Closed beta will open up to general availability over the course of 2026.

Fill out the short application at my.dargo.net/welcome?apply=1. We review manually, usually within 24 hours, and email you an invitation code if you're approved.

Not natively — Dargo's BYOD agent is Linux-only. On macOS, run a Linux VM under Multipass, OrbStack, or UTM and install Dargo inside it. On Windows, use WSL 2 with systemd enabled. More detail on the BYOD page.

BYOD-only accounts get 1 free slot. Additional slots are $19 one-time each, non-refundable but re-usable (delete a device and the slot frees up for the next one). Hardware-device owners get unlimited free BYOD slots on top of their Dargo Mini Server.

Hardware: one-time purchase, $499 for the 4 GB / 256 GB config, $599 for 8 GB / 512 GB, plus a wider RAM × SSD matrix on the Store page. BYOD: $0 upfront if you bring your own Linux box (1 free slot; $19 per extra slot). For a side-by-side breakdown of every difference between Hardware and BYOD, see the How it compares section on the BYOD page.

No mandatory monthly fee, no subscription, no per-app charge. You pay only if your usage exceeds the free monthly traffic allowance, and even then it's pay-as-you-go (top up your balance from the portal). Most personal usage stays well inside the free tier.

Hardware: 500 GB / month per device. BYOD: 2 GB / month per device. Each device has its own pool — it's never shared across the account.

The BYOD allowance was bumped from 500 MB to 2 GB in June 2026 — the smaller number turned out to be too tight for the typical personal site. We may continue to raise it over time as traffic patterns and our infrastructure costs evolve; any increase applies automatically with no action needed on your side.

$0.40 / GB up to 2 TB total monthly traffic; $0.25 / GB above 2 TB. Charged against your prepaid balance — no auto-billed credit card unless you opt into auto-reload.

Hardware devices: stay online but throttled at reduced speed until you top up. They never go fully offline — the device is yours, you bought it. BYOD devices: pause until you top up. Top up at any time from the billing page and the device reconnects within seconds.

Yes — from the billing page in the portal. Pick a threshold ("if my balance drops below $5") and an amount ("top up by $20"). We'll charge your saved payment method automatically when the threshold is hit. Off by default.

The app itself is free if it's open-source. Running it uses some of your device's free traffic + storage. A personal blog with light readership won't move the needle on your monthly allowance; a viral post that hits 100 GB of traffic in a week will start to dip into overage on a hardware device, or trip the cutoff on a BYOD slot.

No. Every install gets a free *.mydargo.com subdomain (e.g. jane-blog.mydargo.com) with a valid HTTPS certificate. You only need your own domain if you want a branded URL.

Yes — point a CNAME or A record at the address the portal gives you, verify ownership, and Dargo auto-issues an HTTPS certificate. Works for both root domains (example.com) and subdomains (app.example.com).

Certs are auto-issued by Let's Encrypt and renewed automatically. You never touch certbot, never copy keys around, never see an expired-cert page. Same handling for *.mydargo.com subdomains and custom domains.

You can put each app on its own subdomain (blog.example.com, files.example.com, chat.example.com) of a domain you own. We don't currently support path-based routing (example.com/blog, example.com/files) on the same domain — subdomains are the cleaner pattern and work with all app integrations.

Yes — for custom domains (the free *.mydargo.com subdomains already run through Cloudflare on our side). Add your domain to a free Cloudflare account, keep the orange-cloud proxy on, set SSL mode to Full (strict), and you get edge caching, image optimization (Polish), Always Online, and DDoS protection at no cost. Cached requests don't touch your device, so they also don't count against your monthly free bandwidth allowance.

Read the full Cloudflare CDN guide →

On your device. Files, databases, photos, chat history — all of it lives in Docker volumes on the SSD inside your Dargo Mini Server (or on your BYOD machine). We don't copy it, don't index it, don't analyze it.

No. Traffic between you and your device is end-to-end encrypted through the tunnel. We can see that a request came through (for billing the bandwidth), not what was in it. Same for the app data on disk — encrypted at rest and only readable by the app itself.

Your hardware and your data are yours regardless of what happens to us. The tunnel + portal services would go offline if we did, but the device itself keeps your data intact. We've designed the apps to use standard, portable formats (SQLite databases, plain files, Docker volumes) so you can pull your data off the SSD and move it elsewhere.

No. We sell hardware and bandwidth. We don't have ad networks, we don't have a "data products" division, and we'd lose the entire premise of the company if we ever did. See the privacy policy for the legalese version.

No. Visitors connect to Dargo's edge, which then forwards through the tunnel to your device. They see Dargo's IP, not yours.

An opt-in mode in Settings that turns the Dargo Mini Server into a full personal VPS you happen to own. Unlocks SSH access, a browser-based terminal, native app deploys (Python / Node / Go / etc), developer proxies, and custom Docker app uploads. Full overview on the Developer page.

Yes — once you enable developer mode the portal gives you a browser-based terminal by default (no SSH client install required, just open the device's SSH & Terminal tab). A non-root devuser account is created on the device behind that terminal.

If you'd rather use a desktop SSH client (Terminal, iTerm, PuTTY, Terminus, etc.), that's available too but locked behind an explicit unlock — open a support ticket from the portal and we'll enable it on your account. The extra step is there so the average developer doesn't have to think about key management to get a terminal.

Yes. Upload a docker-compose.yml through the Develop page and Dargo runs it like any AppStore app — same tunnels, same HTTPS, same lifecycle. Private to your account.

Yes — SSH in, install whatever runtime you want (Go, Python, Node, Ruby, Rust, etc.), write a systemd user service so it survives reboots, then add a Developer Proxy in the portal to expose it on a subdomain or custom domain. Step-by-step example on the Developer page.

2 free per account — enough to ship a personal site or two. Paid upgrades are planned. The 2 free is shared across all your devices.

Both Hardware and BYOD users sign up at my.dargo.net/#/signup. During closed beta, signup is gated by an Activation Code: Hardware buyers use their device's Serial Number as the Activation Code, and approved BYOD applicants use the invitation code they received by email after their application was reviewed.

Yes — the portal at my.dargo.net is free for every Dargo user (hardware and BYOD). You're paying for hardware + optional bandwidth overage, not for portal access.

Yes. Add as many Dargo Mini Servers as you own (no quota) and as many BYOD devices as your slot count allows. Each device has its own apps, its own subdomains, and its own free-traffic allowance.

Open a support ticket from inside the MyDargo portal at my.dargo.net and we'll delete the account and any associated data. If you're locked out of the portal, use the public support form at dargo.net/support instead. The hardware is still yours — cancellation just removes you from the portal.

Worldwide. Customs, duties, and import taxes are buyer's responsibility for international orders.

Usually within 2 business days from order to dispatch (this may take longer during Closed Beta and Open Beta). Transit time depends on destination — typically 3-9 business days within North America and Europe, 7-15 days for further regions.

30 days from delivery, hardware in original condition, original packaging. Buyer pays return shipping unless the device is defective. Full return policy.

1 year hardware warranty against manufacturing defects. Warranty terms.

Open a support ticket — we'll diagnose, and offer repair / replacement / discounted swap as the case fits.

Three channels: open a support ticket from inside the portal (best for device-specific questions — the ticket arrives with your device + app context attached), use the public ticket form for pre-sales or general questions, or click the chat bubble in the corner of any storefront page.

Yes — the guides section has quick-start docs, app-specific setup, and Developer-mode walkthroughs. Add the URLs you want covered to our backlog by filing a support ticket.

Not yet — we're keeping support 1:1 while we're still small. A community space is on the roadmap once volume justifies it.