Bitcart Configurator allows you to easily deploy new Bitcart instances, or re-configuring existing ones, with ease and no technical skills.

Configurator demo is accessible at https://configurator.bitcart.ai

You can access it from your admin by clicking the configurator button.

It allows you to easily deploy a new instance by just answering a few questions.

Deployment destination

There are 3 deployment destinations available: remote, manual, and current instance.

Remote

By entering the server credentials, the Configurator will automagically connect to your server and deploy the instance, while you drink a cup of coffee!

For an example of successful deployment, watch the video above.

Manual

If you don't trust the configurator's server, or you just need a copiable script you can run yourself, you can use the manual mode. It generates a script for you to copy, based on selected settings.

Current instance

If you are the server admin, you will have access to the current instance mode. You can change settings of your current instance without logging in to your server. By clicking current instance button Bitcart loads all current settings which you can customize.

Domains

On this page you can enter your domain where to deploy (using ), and optionally disable https support. If you don't have a domain, you can enable tor support in the later pages.

Coins

On this page you can configure and enable all the coins you want. For each coin you may enable lightning with just one click, or change network settings. Note that you must select at least one coin.

Additional

On the additional page, you may enable additional plugin packs, for example, Tor support.

Advanced

On this page you can configure advanced parameters. If you don't need to edit them, skip to the next page.

You can choose an installation pack (all, backend, frontend or none), and add more custom components, or edit the bitcart-docker repository URL.

Summary

On this page you can preview settings used. If something is wrong, you will see warnings.

When you are ready, click continue.

Deploy stage

After clicking continue, you will either see a ready script, or a progress bar, while configurator is deploying a new instance. Refer to each deployment destination for more details.

Bitcart is extremely easy to deploy on your own server!

We have the minimal requirements ever possible:

• 1 GB RAM (2 GB if enabling ETH)

• 10 GB disk

• Unix-based operating systems (something common like ubuntu is recommended)

Please refer to this diagram to choose your deployment method (you can see their descriptions in navigation sidebar at left):

In case you're not yet ready to choose where or how to host (it can cost as little as 3.5$ a month), you can try using Bitcart using or .

Bitcart uses docker for deployment. This allows us to simplify the installation and make Bitcart installable in almost any environment.

Currently Bitcart runs on 2 architectures: amd64 (most PC and servers), arm64 (raspberry pi). Arm32 is not supported officially anymore.

Almost every docker deployment starts like that:

There are different environment variables available in order to customize the deployment

Environment variables are set like so:

Here are the main ones:

• BITCART_HOST configures on which domain Bitcart should run. It is required unless you use any of the methods from . It works in . Your Bitcart Store will be accessible at BITCART_HOST, admin panel at /admin and Merchants API at /api. For other ways of configuration (for example different servers), check the one domain guide

• BITCART_CRYPTOS configures which coins to enable. It is a list of coin symbols separated by commas. By default only btc is enabled. For example, to enable btc and eth, you would run export BITCART_CRYPTOS=btc,eth

There are also quite a few settings related to configuring coins in Bitcart. Each coin has the same set of settings you can configure:

• COIN_NETWORK changes on which network the coin runs. For example: export BTC_NETWORK=testnet would enable testnet in BTC coin with no other changes required!

• COIN_LIGHTNING enables lightning network for coins which support it (BTC-based). For BTC you would do: export BTC_LIGHTNING=true

For the complete list of configuration settings you can use (to e.g. open some ports, change networks used or anything else), check out full configuration description at .

Raspberry Pi is a good low-power solution to host Bitcart at home. It is quite cheap and you can use it to build a lot of custom stuff.

We recommend using the latest RPI4, but RPI3 would be good too.

What's good is: Bitcart can work with any RPI flavour, even 1 GB RAM is enough to run Bitcart. Though we recommend picking up a bit more (2 GB) just to avoid slowdowns.

As for the disk, SD card, USB memory or SSD - it doesn't matter, just know that SSD is usually faster. Basically any disk on the market should have enough space (10 GB)

Important note about 32-bit operating systems

A third-party host is someone who runs Bitcart instance and enables registration for other users. They might be free (but could accept donations) or with paid access.

Sometimes it's hard for users to deploy a new instance, but they want to try right away. That's what third-party hosts are for.

In general, it's not recommended to use them especially if you plan to scale your business, but it's great for testing.

Our demo at https://admin.bitcart.ai showcases all coins Bitcart supports, but we don't recommend using it for commercial purposes.

There are some hosts ran by others

If you want to try out Bitcart on your local machine, it is also possible. If you don't have a domain name, Bitcart provides a way to test in a local-only deployment.

The setup is almost the same as always (see ), the catch is: the domain name must end with .local. Bitcart then modifies your host machines' /etc/hosts file to make it work.

Here and later we assume that you've cloned the bitcart-docker repository, entered that directory and entered root shell by using sudo su - (note that minus at the end, it's important!). If you're on mac os, use the scripts as your current user and don't enter root shell.

Sometimes you might want to run Bitcart on your own hardware. This is a bit more complicated than using a VPS. But in the end you will get way better security and control over your data.

Note that no matter where you host Bitcart, as your private keys are never required, your data is always safe, you can export and move the data to any server. So if you started on a VPS, you can use our backups feature to create a backup of all your data and restore on your own hardware.

Requirements

Here are the requirements for running Bitcart on your own hardware:

1. High-speed internet connection. The faster the better. This is to ensure the speed of invoice detection

2. Any hardware ever. Yes, that's right! You can use your old PC or basically anything for that. Our minimal requirements are 1 GB RAM and around 10 GB disk. AMD64 hardware is the most tested one, but if needed, refer to our

3. Any linux-based OS would suffice, but using something like Ubuntu 20.04 is the most common choice.

4. (Optional) Static ip - that's required only if your setting up with your own domain name. If you only plan to use bitcart locally/via tor, this is not needed

5. (Optional) Domain name - see the note above

Setup

This guide assumes that you have static ip set up and your own domain name. If not, refer to the .

• Configure static IP in ubuntu via something like

• If you have a domain name, create a DNS A record pointing to your static ip address (tip: you can get it if you type whatsmyip in google)

• Set up port forwarding on your router for ports 80 and 443 to your machine ip address. Every router is different, usually there are guides existing on any model

• Clone and install Bitcart (replace bitcart.yourdomain.com with the actual domain name):

• All done! Enjoy your Bitcart instance! If needed, check out on how to restore the data from your previous instance.

The process is basically the following:

1. Install OS required libraries

2. Install python3 (3.11+)

3. Install nodejs (20) and yarn

4. Install postgresql

5. Install redis (6.2.0+)

6. Clone and run all parts of Bitcart

7. (Optional) Open Firewall Ports and Access the Sites

Warning: Not recommended to use in production

Manual installation is NOT recommended in production. It should be only used for learning purpose.

Instead you should use the .

The docker deployment will provide you easy update system and make sure that all moving parts are wired correctly without any technical knowledge. It will also setup HTTPS for you.

Typical manual installation

This steps have been done on ubuntu 22.04, adapt for your own install.

1) Install OS required libraries

Or the equivalent for your os package manager

More info on libsecp256k1 in or

2) Install Python 3

Usually it might have already been installed, but we also need pip3 and dev packages, so:

3) Install uv

uv is a fast Python package manager used to manage dependencies in Bitcart. Install it by following the official .

4) Install Node.JS and Yarn

5) Install PostgresSQL

Note, replace REPLACEME with your new postgres password.

6) Install Redis

7) Clone and prepare Bitcart components

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

For any other daemon(coin) you want to use, run:

Where coin_name is coin code(btc, ltc, eth, etc.).

Create a file conf/.env It contains all the settings. For now, we just need to set database password and enabled cryptos.

Apply database migrations:

Bitcart admin panel

Bitcart store

Run everything

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

Start daemons from the bitcart repo directory:

For any other coin, do the similar procedure:

Start api:

Start background worker:

If you want to run a specific coin on a test network or change other environment settings you can update the .env file in the

Bitcart admin panel

Bitcart store

Default ports

• The Bitcart API runs on port 8000.

• Daemons on ports 5000-500X

• The Bitcart Admin panel runs on port 3000

(Optional) Open Firewall Ports and Access the Sites

If you are running Bitcart on your local machine - you will not need to do these steps. You can go ahead and access the system with:

• Bitcart Admin Panel: http://127.0.0.1:3000/

• Bitcart Store: http://127.0.0.1:4000/

• Bitcart Merchants API: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

If you are running Bitcart on a remote machine, you will need to do additional things to access them.

Option 1: Nginx proxy (Recommended)

This option is recommended to proxy secure incoming requests to the correct bitcart process.

Install Nginx

Add configuration for each component: bitcart-store, bitcart and bitcart-admin

Enable the config

Add DNS records for your server names to point to your VM's ip

Check the config and reload nginx

Add TLS certificates with the letsencrypt CA for the sites

Now you should be able to access the components over TLS. You can then also enable http2 in your nginx configuration if you want.

You might want to look at the

Option 2: No proxy

If you have a firewall, you will want to open ports 3000, 4000 and 8000. Using ufw as an example:

yarn is listening on localhost 127.0.0.1 by default and you won't be able to access it over the internet unless you reverse proxy it with nginx. If you want to expose it without reverse proxy, use the environment variable: NUXT_HOST=0.0.0.0 to listen on all interfaces.

The store and admin site need public access to the bitcart api (URL should be resolvable both client and server side).

Using the manual method you need to set that with environment variables. The complete setup of the Bitcart Admin Panel and Store may look like this:

Note: The above is the minimum to make it work and not a production grade solution. We still recommend to use docker deployment unless you really know what you're doing.

Access the site remotely

• Bitcart Admin Panel: http://my-bitcart-admin-ip:3000/

• Bitcart Store: http://my-bitcart-store-ip:4000/

• Bitcart Merchants API: http://my-bitcart-store-ip:8000/

Continue with:

(Optional) Managing Processes

If you want the procaesses: bitcart api, daemons, worker and frontend (bitcart admin and bitcart store) to be managed with automatic startup, error reporting etc then consider using or to manage the processes.

Upgrading manual deployment

Note: it is recommended to use docker deployment for easy upgrades.

To upgrade manually, follow the following steps:

1) Stop everything already running

Merchants API, workers, daemons, Admin panel and Store should be stopped

2) Pull latest changes

Run :

For every Bitcart component directory (Merchants API, Admin Panel, Store).

3) Upgrade dependencies

Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API:

For any other daemon(coin) you want to use, run:

Where coin_name is coin code(btc, ltc, eth, etc.).

Bitcart admin

Bitcart store

4) Apply new database migrations

In Bitcart core(daemons) & Merchants API directory, run:

5) Rebuild store and admin

For Bitcart Admin Panel and Store, run:

6) Start everything again

Follow instructions