Self-Hosted Stirling PDF: 50 PDF Tools on Your Own Server

Every business handles PDFs, and most people use random free online tools to merge, split, or convert them. Those tools upload your PDF to a server you do not control, process it, and return the result. What happens to the PDF in between is anyone's guess. Stirling PDF gives you 50-plus PDF tools on your own server. Your documents never leave your infrastructure.

Step 1: Deploy with Docker

Stirling PDF deploys with a single Docker command:

docker run -d \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \
  -v stirling-data:/usr/share/tessdata \
  -v stirling-config:/configs \
  -e STIRLING_NO_INTERNET=true \
  --name stirling-pdf \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  docker.stirlingpdf.com/stirlingtools/stirling-pdf

The environment variable STIRLING_NO_INTERNET is optional. When set to true, Stirling PDF runs entirely offline and disables features that require internet access (external API calls for conversion). This is the safest configuration for business use.

Step 2: Configure Your Reverse Proxy

In Nginx Proxy Manager, add a proxy host for pdf.yourdomain.com pointing to stirling-pdf:8080. Request an SSL certificate and enable Force SSL.

Step 3: What You Can Do with Stirling PDF

Open https://pdf.yourdomain.com. You see a dashboard with tools organised by category:

• Merge/Split: Combine multiple PDFs into one, or extract specific pages
• Convert: PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, images, and vice versa
• Security: Add password protection, remove passwords, add watermarks, redact sensitive content
• Sign: Add digital signatures and handwritten signatures to documents
• OCR: Extract text from scanned documents and images, making them searchable
• Compress: Reduce PDF file size without significant quality loss
• Organise: Rotate, reorder, add page numbers, and adjust margins

Files are processed on your server and deleted automatically after processing. You can configure the retention period. By default, files are deleted immediately after the browser session ends.

Step 4: Configure Automatic Cleanup

To ensure processed files are cleaned up promptly, add these environment variables:

-e SYSTEM_DEFAULTLOCALE=en-US \
-e UI_APPNAME=VPS1-PDF \
-e APP_HOMEDESCRIPTION="Your private PDF toolkit" \
-e APP_HOMENAVBARNAME="Your Company PDF"

These customise the branding for your team. The tool processes files in memory and writes temporary files to a configurable directory. No PDF content persists on the server after processing.

If uploading sensitive documents to random conversion websites makes you nervous, VPS1 deploys Stirling PDF on your own server. Every PDF your business touches stays on your infrastructure.