Wekan Install on AWS: Wekan Installation Tutorial with a Pre-Configured AMI

A Wekan install is less about Wekan than about what it sits on: MongoDB, a reverse proxy, a certificate, working email and backups. Get those right and Wekan just runs. Meetrix's AMI sets all of it up on AWS: Wekan 9.22 on Ubuntu 24.04, MongoDB backed up to S3, SSL through Let's Encrypt, created by a CloudFormation stack in 5-10 minutes. There's a 5-day free trial.

Install steps first. Then a short tutorial for your first board, and the other ways to install Wekan if an AMI isn't what you want.

Developer Guide

Wekan - Developer Guide

A complete technical walkthrough for setting up, configuring, and managing your Wekan instance on AWS.

Meetrix.IO - Dinesh Chathuranga

Install Wekan on AWS in six steps

1. Open Wekan in the AWS Marketplace, click "Continue to Subscribe" and accept the terms.
2. Click "Continue to Configuration", choose "CloudFormation Template" and your region, then "Continue to Launch" and "Launch CloudFormation".
3. Fill in the parameters: Admin Email (for the certificate), DeploymentName, DomainName, InstanceType (t3.medium recommended), your keyName, an S3Bucket for MongoDB backups, and the SMTPHost, SMTPPort, SMTPUser and SMTPPassword for outgoing email.
4. Choose "Roll back all stack resources" on failure, tick the IAM acknowledgement and submit. If it fails on vCPUs, follow https://meetrix.io/blogs/increase-aws-vcpu-quota/ to raise your quota.
5. After 5-10 minutes, copy PublicIp from the Outputs tab and point your domain's A record at it in Route 53.
6. Open DashboardUrl (or DashboardUrlIp) and register your account. A 502 just means Wekan is still starting; give it about 5 minutes.

Don't skip the SMTP fields. Wekan sends invitations and password resets by email, and without working SMTP, the colleagues you invite simply never hear about it. Amazon SES works fine if you don't have a mail provider already.

If SSL doesn't set itself up

Automatic SSL needs the domain on Route 53. Otherwise, log in to the server via SSH:

ssh -i <your key name> ubuntu@<Public IP address>

Then run the SSL generation script and follow the prompts:

sudo /root/certificate_generate_standalone.sh

To stop Wekan, stop the instance from the EC2 console. To remove it completely, delete the CloudFormation stack.

Wekan tutorial: your first board

Wekan looks like Trello, with one extra layer that's worth using from day one: swimlanes.

1. Create a board for one team or project, not one per person.
2. Add lists for your stages, such as To Do, Doing, Review and Done.
3. Add swimlanes for the rows that cut across stages: a client, a product area, or "urgent".
4. Add cards, then open one to set members, labels, due dates, checklists and attachments.
5. Set a WIP limit on the Doing list, so the board shows when too much is in progress.
6. Invite your team from the board menu. This is where working SMTP matters.

For a closer look at what's on each screen, including rules and the admin panel, see our hands-on Wekan demo and review.

An AWS kanban board your team owns

The reason to run Wekan on AWS instead of using Trello is ownership. The boards, attachments and comment history live in MongoDB on your instance, backed up to your S3 bucket, in the region you pick. Nobody changes the free plan's limits on you, and nothing leaves your account. If you're weighing that against Trello's convenience, our Wekan vs Trello comparison lays out the trade, and our roundup of open source Jira alternatives covers heavier project management tools.

Wekan installation options: AMI, Docker or Snap

The AMI isn't the only way. Wekan's own project supports a Docker Compose setup and a Snap package, among others, documented in the Wekan wiki. Docker is the common choice if you already run containers. Snap is quick on a single Ubuntu server but less flexible.

Any of them gets Wekan running. What the AMI adds is the surrounding work: the VPC, the certificate, the MongoDB backups to S3 and the SMTP wiring, set up by one stack and billed through AWS, with support at aws@meetrix.io when something breaks. The Wekan developer guide has screenshots of every step above.