Question

How to Automatically Restart a Crashed App on a DigitalOcean Droplet?

Posted on May 9, 2025
Node.js
Asked by d93c0ac44da7475b906fbde31d09fb

I’m running a Node.js app on a DigitalOcean Droplet (Ubuntu), and every now and then the app crashes due to some unhandled error. I’d like to make sure the app restarts automatically if that happens.

What’s the best way to set this up? Should I use a process manager or something built into the OS? Or maybe Docker?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• May 9, 2025

Accepted Answer

Hey!

For me the best way to keep your Node.js app running is to use PM2, it is a process manager made for Node apps. It takes care of restarts, logs, and even starts your app again if the server reboots.

Quick setup:

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start app.js
pm2 startup
pm2 save

That’s it, it’s solid and easy to manage.

Here’s a full guide from DigitalOcean if you want to dig deeper: 👉 How To Set Up a Node.js Application for Production on Ubuntu

If you’re planning to scale things or want better portability and isolation, you might also want to look into Docker as you mentioned. It makes your app super easy to deploy across different environments and helps avoid the classic “works on my machine” issue.

Here is a free ebook for beginners: 📘 Introduction to Docker

- Bobby