Goodbye, DigitalOcean

We are deprecating the Passbolt Community Edition on the DigitalOcean Marketplace. Starting December 1, 2026, it will no longer be offered for new deployments or maintained as a separate install method.

If you already run passbolt from that image, don't worry: your instance keeps working. You have two simple ways forward: keep updating it where it is, or move it to a fresh server.

What this means for your instance

Nothing breaks. Under the hood, it is a regular Debian server running our standard passbolt package, pulled from the official Passbolt repository. So your droplet keeps receiving passbolt updates exactly like any other Debian install. The only change is on our side: we will point you to the Debian documentation instead of a DigitalOcean-specific page.

Option 1: Keep your droplet and keep updating

This is the easiest path: follow the Debian update guide. It is the same procedure you already know.

1. Take your site down: sudo systemctl stop nginx
2. Back up your installation (yes, every time).
3. Update passbolt first, then the rest of the system: sudo apt update; sudo apt --only-upgrade install passbolt-ce-server; sudo apt upgrade
4. Clear the cache: sudo su -s /bin/bash -c "/usr/share/php/passbolt/bin/cake cache clear_all" www-data
5. Bring your site back online: sudo systemctl start nginx

Option 2: Migrate to a fresh server

Prefer a clean start? Move your instance to a new Debian 13 server with the migration guide. You can also stay on DigitalOcean: a plain Debian 13 droplet does the job.

In short, the migration looks like this:

1. Back up your current instance: database dump, GPG server keys and passbolt.php.
2. Set up the passbolt package repository on the new server and install the package.
3. Restore your configuration file and server keys.
4. Load your database backup and run the migration command.
5. Check everything with the healthcheck.

If you use your own TLS certificate, copy it over as well. With Let's Encrypt, simply set it up again on the new server but make sure that it’s reachable from the internet, that you did the DNS update and that the port 80 is opened because the ACME challenge uses that. If you plan to re-use the same FQDN, the migration will be transparent for your users, if you plan to change it, please consider taking a look at this documentation beforehands. Also, please keep your old droplet until the new server is up and tested. 

Not a Debian fan anymore? Guides for Ubuntu, RedHat and other distributions are listed in the migration documentations.

Need a hand?

If something goes sideways during an update or a migration, or you simply have a question, feel free to open a thread on our community forum. Share your issues, plus what you tried, the usual tip is: share what you tried, share what you see and explain what you expected instead. The more details, the faster people can help.

Thanks to everyone who started their passbolt journey with a single click on DigitalOcean. 

Happy updating! 🙂