What you need to know:
- Contabo now offers three new 1-Click Apps: Paperclip, Dokploy, and Hermes Agent.
- Paperclip and Hermes Agent orchestrate AI agents. Dokploy is a self-hosted deployment platform.
- Install any of the three at order time or via Reinstall on an existing server.
- Coolify and ZeroClaw are also now supported, with their own setup guides.
If you’ve been waiting to run an AI agent or deploy your own apps without touching Heroku, you don’t need to configure any of it by hand anymore. Three open-source tools have joined the 1-Click App list, available straight from the configurator when you order a new VPS or VDS, or through Reinstall on a server you already have: Paperclip, Dokploy, and Hermes Agent. Two more tools, Coolify and ZeroClaw, are also now supported on Contabo, each with its own setup guide if you’d rather run one of those instead.
Three New 1-Click Apps, Plus Two More Now Supported
The three new 1-Click Apps split into two jobs: Paperclip and Hermes Agent orchestrate AI agents, and Dokploy deploys and manages your own apps and databases. Coolify and ZeroClaw round out the list as newly supported options with installation guides of their own.
Paperclip: run a team of AI agents, not just one
Paperclip is an open-source orchestration tool for autonomous AI companies. Instead of a single chatbot, you define an org chart, for example a CEO, engineers, and marketers, and Paperclip coordinates their work through a shared task system while you watch progress from a central dashboard. Adapters connect it to Claude Code, the Gemini CLI, and the Codex CLI, so you bring your own models. Install it, connect over SSH, and configure the rest from there.
Dokploy: deploy and manage your own apps and databases
Dokploy is an open-source PaaS platform that deploys and manages applications and databases from a browser dashboard. It builds from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Gitea, runs on Docker with Traefik handling routing and SSL, and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and MariaDB out of the box, plus volume backups for anything stateful.
Hermes Agent: an AI agent that remembers what it did last time
Hermes Agent is an open-source, self-improving AI agent from Nous Research. It keeps memory across sessions instead of resetting after every task, so it gets faster at problems it has already solved. It can schedule work in plain language, delegate to isolated subagents, and reach you through Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, or email.
Coolify and ZeroClaw: also now supported
Coolify, an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Vercel, and ZeroClaw, a lightweight, self-hosted AI agent runtime built to run on minimal resources, are both now supported on Contabo VPS and VDS. Each has its own setup guides specifically for Contabo servers.
Why We Keep Adding to the 1-Click List
We keep expanding 1-Click Apps because the gap between wanting to try a tool and having a working instance is where most self-hosting projects stall, not the tool itself. Paperclip and Hermes Agent earned a spot because self-hosted AI agents became a real daily workload this past year, and we’d rather you run yours on infrastructure you control than hand another vendor your prompts and data. Dokploy earned a spot because plenty of you were already installing it by hand on a Contabo VPS, judging by how often the install script turns up in self-hosting tutorials. Coolify and ZeroClaw round out the list as tools people were already pairing with Contabo on their own, so a guide exists for both even without a dedicated 1-Click app.
Who These Apps Are For, and Who Should Skip Them
Developers running multi-agent AI projects, teams tired of Heroku-style per-seat pricing, and anyone who wants a personal AI agent without renting compute from a big lab all have a reason to look at this list. If a single chatbot through an API already covers your needs, Paperclip and Hermes Agent add more moving parts than the job calls for. If you deploy one static site a year, Dokploy is more platform than you need. A plain VPS with a web server does that job fine. If Coolify or ZeroClaw fits your workflow better than the three 1-Click Apps, the setup guides get you there almost as fast.
How to Install Paperclip, Dokploy, or Hermes Agent
Installing any of the three new 1-Click Apps takes one of two paths: pick it during checkout, or add it to a server you already run.
- New server: when ordering a VPS or VDS, choose Paperclip, Dokploy, or Hermes Agent as the pre-installed application in the configurator.
- Existing server: in the Customer Control Panel, use the Quick Action menu, select Reinstall, switch to the Application Installation tab, and choose the app.
- Set an admin password and click Install. Installation can take up to 30 minutes.
Dokploy opens straight to a web dashboard once installation finishes. Paperclip and Hermes Agent don’t expose a public web interface by default, so you’ll connect over SSH to finish setup. For Coolify or ZeroClaw, follow the setup guides linked above instead of the configurator.
For all these apps, we handle the VPS, the network, and the 1-Click installer, not the application itself. Questions about configuring Paperclip’s adapters or Dokploy’s build settings go to that project’s own documentation and community, same as with every other 1-Click App. Second, an SSH-only setup is a real barrier if you’ve never used SSH. It isn’t hard, but it’s an extra step Dokploy’s web dashboard doesn’t require. We think that trade-off is worth it for tools this capable, but it’s fair to know it’s there before you click install.
FAQ
Paperclip, Dokploy, and Hermes Agent are three open-source applications added to the Customer Control Panel’s Application Installation list. Paperclip and Hermes Agent orchestrate AI agents, and Dokploy is a self-hosted platform for deploying your own applications and databases. All three install free on any VPS or VDS, either at order time through the configurator or via Reinstall on a server you already have.
No. All three install at no extra cost beyond your existing VPS or VDS subscription, the same as every other 1-Click App. You only pay for the server itself. Dokploy can go on to deploy paid third-party services once you’re using it, but the installer and the application itself carry no separate fee.
Choose one as the pre-installed application when ordering a new VPS or VDS, or add it to an existing server through the Customer Control Panel: Quick Action, Reinstall, Application Installation tab, then select the app and set an admin password. Installation finishes within 30 minutes, after which the app appears under Quick Action on the server’s detail page.
Both run as background services rather than web applications, so neither exposes a public web interface by default. You configure and interact with them by connecting to the server over SSH instead of a browser. Dokploy skips this step because it ships as a web dashboard reachable directly once installation completes.
Yes, both are supported on Contabo VPS and VDS, though neither is one of the three 1-Click Apps added in this release. Coolify is a self-hosted deployment platform similar to Dokploy, and ZeroClaw is a lightweight AI agent runtime. Each has its own setup guide linked above, so getting either one running still only takes following a short, documented set of steps rather than a fully manual install.
