Every time you scale a campaign, cloud-based tracking platforms charge you more. Voluum, RedTrack, and Keitaro Cloud all tier their pricing so that higher traffic means a bigger monthly bill. At serious click volumes, that licensing overhead eats into margins the same way a poorly optimized campaign does. Binom takes a different approach: one flat monthly fee, no matter how many clicks you send.
This guide walks through a real install of Binom v2 on is*hosting’s Premium plan, covering OS requirements, server sizing, the actual installer prompts, and how to keep the tracker updated without touching files manually.
Binom is a self-hosted affiliate tracking platform. The current version, Binom v2, runs on ClickHouse and PostgreSQL rather than the MySQL stack of v1. It handles click routing, conversion postbacks, landing page hosting, rule-based traffic splits, and cost tracking across traffic sources. LP Protect is a built-in anti-spy feature that embeds cloaking code into landing pages to block spy tools and bots from seeing your offer.
Binom Protect is a separate bundled service (running as its own container) that extends that protection with bot, VPN, proxy, and anti-detect browser detection at the traffic level. Reports pull from a local database in real time with no API round trips involved. According to Binom’s documentation, v2 processes up to 260 million clicks per day on a single server and returns reports up to 30 times faster than v1.
Before you begin, keep three key limitations in mind:
Before touching the server, do this first: register at binom.org and start a trial. The installer creates a local tracker instance and outputs a Tracker ID. You paste that ID into your binom.org account to activate the license. If you haven’t registered first, the tracker loads a “License not found” screen when you try to log in. Binom offers a 14-day trial and a 30-day trial. The 30-day option requires requesting it from support.
Once your account is ready, confirm you also have:
Server sizing depends on your expected traffic. Binom publishes specific guidance by clicks per second (CPS):
|
Use case |
RAM |
CPU |
Storage |
is*hosting plan |
|
Up to 20 CPS / ~1,200 clicks/min |
4 GB |
3 cores |
50 GB SSD |
VPS Premium ($31.99/mo, annual) |
|
Up to 100 CPS / ~6,000 clicks/min |
8 GB |
4 cores |
80 GB SSD |
VPS Elite ($47.99/mo, annual) |
The Medium plan (40 GB SSD) does not meet the installer’s 40 GB free space requirement once Ubuntu’s ~3 GB base footprint is accounted for. After installation, Binom itself uses around 12 GB of disk. Premium (50 GB) clears the installer threshold and leaves workable headroom. Storage grows at roughly 2–3 GB per 1 million clicks, so plan accordingly for high-volume campaigns.
All is*hosting plans include weekly VPS backups at no extra cost. Every plan also includes 1 dedicated IPv4 by default, which satisfies Binom’s requirement for a public IP for campaign tracking links and DNS configuration.
Binom v2 needs a clean Ubuntu box with 40+ GB free and a dedicated IP. The Premium plan clears the installer threshold with room to grow.
If you are new to Linux server setup, this guide covers the initial SSH connection, user creation, and firewall basics before running any application installer.
ssh root@your_server_ipConfirm the OS version and check that no web services are already running:
lsb_release -a
systemctl list-units --type=service --state=running --no-pager | grep -E 'nginx|apache|mysql|docker'The lsb_release output should show Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 LTS. The service check should return nothing. Also confirm free disk space:
df -h /You need at least 40 GB free in the “Avail” column before proceeding.
If you want HTTPS, create an A record in your DNS registrar pointing your tracking domain to the server’s IPv4 address. DNS propagation typically takes a few minutes to an hour. You can check at whatsmydns.net before running the installer. For a DNS configuration walkthrough, see this guide.
If you skip this step, the installer proceeds with the bare IP and the tracker runs over HTTP. Ad campaigns require a domain with HTTPS, but the install itself completes fine without one.
Download and run the v2 installer:
wget https://data.binom.org/binom_v2_install.sh -O /root/binom_v2_install.sh
bash /root/binom_v2_install.sh install 2>&1 | tee /root/binom-install-log.txtThe installer asks for one thing: your email address. Type it and press Enter. After that it runs fully automatically through four stages:
Installing dependencies...
Installing docker...
Installing tracker...
Installing observer...
Waiting for TD service...
Installing the default settings...
Done!The whole process takes around 10 to 15 minutes. When it finishes, the terminal displays your access details:
Your tracker access:
http://YOUR_IP/index
Login: admin
Password: [generated password]
Tracker ID: [your tracker ID]Save all four values. The password and Tracker ID are generated once and cannot be recovered from the installer.
Open a browser and go to http://YOUR_IP/index. You will see a “License not found” screen showing your Tracker ID. Log in to your binom.org account, go to the license section, and enter the Tracker ID. Once the license is linked, refresh the tracker URL and log in with the admin credentials from Step 3.
The installer sets up Caddy as the reverse proxy, which handles ports 80 and 443. Configure UFW to match:
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enableBinom runs eight Docker containers behind Caddy. Docker writes its own iptables rules that take effect regardless of UFW’s settings, but all external traffic enters through Caddy on 80 and 443. The internal container ports (8080, 8003, 9000, 5432, 8123, and others) are not exposed to the public internet.
Go to Campaigns > Create and give the campaign a name. The campaign builder lets you define traffic paths with landers, offers, and rules. Each path carries a weight percentage controlling how traffic distributes across them. Rules trigger based on conditions like GEO, device type, ISP, or custom tokens passed from your traffic source.
The campaign link the builder generates is what you paste into your traffic source. Copy it from the campaign details panel and use it exactly as shown. The {click_id} token and any other parameter placeholders must match what your traffic source substitutes at click time.
Add a postback URL in your affiliate network settings:
https://yourdomain.com/click?cnv_id={CLICK_ID}&payout={PAYOUT}Replace {CLICK_ID} and {PAYOUT} with the actual token names your network uses. When a conversion fires, the network sends a GET request to this URL and Binom records it against the originating click.
The Reports tab shows clicks, conversions, revenue, cost, and ROI across any combination of dimensions: campaign, lander, offer, GEO, device, OS, ISP, traffic source. Switching dimensions is a dropdown. Binom’s ClickHouse backend keeps query times under a second for most setups even across wide date ranges.
The Monitor tab shows server load, disk usage, RAM, and a 24-hour traffic graph updated hourly. Load above 80% triggers a visible warning inside the tracker. For external uptime monitoring, Uptime Kuma on a separate VPS covers the gap that Binom’s internal monitor can’t: a monitor running on the same server won’t fire if the server itself goes offline.
Binom checks for updates automatically. When a new version is available, an orange “New update” link appears at the top of the dashboard. Click it, then click Update. The application update runs first; a database schema migration follows and can take several minutes for large datasets. Leave traffic running through the tracker during the update, but avoid loading heavy reports or refreshing campaign costs while it runs.
Before updating, export a database backup. is*hosting includes free weekly VPS backups on all plans, but a server snapshot captures disk state from the last weekly cycle. A targeted export is faster to restore from:
docker exec binom_postgres pg_dump -U postgres binom > /root/binom_backup_$(date +%Y%m%d).sqlOnce the update finishes, clear your browser cache and cookies before testing reports. The Binom docs specifically call this out, and stale cache is a common cause of post-update confusion.
Free weekly VPS backups on every plan — a floor under your targeted pg_dump, so a schema migration gone wrong never costs you the click history.
Binom v2 costs $149/mo on monthly billing, or $104/mo on an annual plan. There are no per-click charges, no domain limits, and no user seat limits at any traffic volume. Cloud trackers that charge per click or per event hit equivalent spend well before you reach scale.
Beyond cost, data ownership is the operational argument. Your click logs, conversion records, and campaign structure live on your own server. Nothing is transmitted to a third-party platform during normal operation, which matters for ad networks with strict data-handling requirements.
The geo argument is concrete for affiliate traffic. Campaigns targeting Southeast Asia run 10 to 30ms redirects from a server in Singapore or Hong Kong; the same campaigns through a European server add 150 to 200ms per hop. is*hosting offers VPS in 40+ locations worldwide, and Binom’s own server guide specifically recommends matching your server region to your traffic GEO.
At this point, Binom v2 is running on an Ubuntu VPS with eight Docker containers behind a Caddy reverse proxy: frontend, backend, ClickHouse for click data, PostgreSQL for campaign and conversion data, a traffic distribution service, an observer, a migrator, and Binom Protect for anti-spy filtering. The install takes around 12 minutes from running the script to seeing the credentials screen.
Post-install, Binom occupies roughly 12 GB of disk and 1.9 GB of RAM at idle. On a Premium plan (8 GB RAM, 4 cores, 50 GB SSD), that leaves comfortable headroom for campaign data growth and traffic peaks. The tracker is accessible at http://YOUR_IP/index or https://yourdomain.com/index if you pointed a domain before install.
Campaigns go live immediately after license activation. The flat $104/month annual license covers every click you push through it from here.
If you are running AI tools or workflow automation alongside your campaigns, the is*hosting blog has a guide on self-hosting Dify and a walkthrough on running n8n. Both fit on a Premium plan if Binom is your primary workload and the AI tools are connecting to external APIs rather than local models.