I am using nginx on a separate machine (VM) I have yet to try it in docker, I just have not found a reason to change it yet.

I’ve tried npm, caddy and traefik but they are always way more complicated then adding a new config file in nginx…

I feel the others add too much to the docker configs and limit what can be added to the reverse proxy. I have control of access from the nginx server, without having to change the apps configuration.

NPM is the closest to what I would like (only needing the same network in docker) if I go the docker way but for some reason it never works as it should when I configure it. So I am sticking to plain nginx.

I think NGINX has the best reverse proxy

Nginx installed directly, I use nano over ssh to edit configs. Forces you to learn some things and I never moved passed it because it works so well.

If you’re just going to VPN in to your home network, I’ve found caddy to be the simplest.

Caddy all the way!

Traefik is a PITA.

Caddy all the way. If you build it with Docker support (or grab the prebuilt), you can use docker container names to reverse proxy using names instead of any IP addresses or ports. It’s nice because if the IP updates, so does caddy. All automatically.

Here’s what my caddyfile looks like;

{
        acme_dns cloudflare {key}
}

domain.dev {
        encode zstd gzip
        root * /var/www/html/domain.dev/
        php_fastcgi unix//run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock
        tls {
                dns cloudflare {key}
        }
}
*.domain.dev {
        encode zstd gzip
        tls {
                dns cloudflare {key}
        }
        @docker host docker.domain.dev
        handle @docker {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy {portainer}
        }
        @test host test.domain.dev
        handle @test {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:10000
        }
        @images host i.domain.dev
        handle @images {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:9002
        }
        @proxy host proxy.domain.dev
        handle @proxy {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy proxy
        }
        @portal host portal.domain.dev
        handle @portal {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy portal
        }
        @ping host ping.domain.dev
        handle @ping {
                encode zstd gzip
                respond "pong!"
        }
}

DNS hosted by cloudflare but because caddy handles ACME certs, all the subdomains automatically get SSL.

I like NPM, it’s simple, but also allows for more complex configs as well if needed. I run it in its own LXC because I have other non-dockerized things that are exposed.

I use Synology integrated reverse proxy, stupidly simple and always works for me (only if IPv6 doesn’t fuck up itself, I can’t fallback to IPv4 because that is CGNATED), if I am missing features that other options have I would like to know :)

For a while now I’ve been using either haproxy or nginx depending on my needs. I’ve hit instances with both where the functionality I want is in the paid version.

Nginx from day one. Well documented, it works. If something doesn’t work chances are you are a quick googlefu away from the solution.

This the main reason I switched from traefik, I can have certificates on all my internal stuff and not just on my docker host. I personally love NPM but maybe I’ll give NPMPlus a try, I have never heard of it.

Caddy. I started with npm but I realized it was hiding enough stuff that I wasn’t learning anything about managing networking. Caddy is super easy and has lot of sane defaults.

i use nginx proxy manager but im barely getting by. Theres zero useful documentation for setting up custom paths so everyone uses subdomains. I ended up buying my own domain just so i didnt feel guilty spamming freedns lmao.

npm/npmplus

Stick with Traefik if you’ve figured it out. It’s much more powerful than NPM in my opinion. If you insist on using NPM, you might want to try NPMPlus, it has more bells and whistles and is more actively maintained.