Intro & Setup

What is GrowthBook?

GrowthBook is an open-source platform that combines three capabilities in a single tool:

Feature flags — gate any code path behind a named toggle you control from the UI.
A/B testing & experimentation — run statistically rigorous experiments without writing analysis code.
Analytics on your own data warehouse — connect Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or any SQL source you already own; GrowthBook never touches your raw events.

You can self-host it on your own infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes) or use GrowthBook Cloud with no server to manage. This course uses Docker so every concept is reproducible locally.

🚀 Run GrowthBook with Docker first

Save this as compose.yaml, then start the stack:

# compose.yaml
services:
  mongo:
    image: mongo:latest
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
  growthbook:
    image: growthbook/growthbook:latest
    ports: ["3000:3000", "3100:3100"]
    depends_on: [mongo]
    environment:
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://root:password@mongo:27017/
    volumes: ["uploads:/usr/local/src/app/packages/back-end/uploads"]
volumes:
  uploads:

Then run docker compose up -d and open http://localhost:3000.

No Docker? Use GrowthBook Cloud (free tier).

What this module covers

Lesson	Slug	Topic
1	`index` (this page)	Module overview & the core loop
2	`what-is-growthbook`	Three pillars — flags, experiments, analytics
3	`run-with-docker`	Docker Compose setup
4	`first-login`	Admin account & navigating the UI
5	`sdk-connection`	SDK Connection key & first SDK call

The core loop

Every GrowthBook workflow follows four steps:

Run GrowthBook — start the platform (Docker or Cloud).
Log in — create your admin account and explore the dashboard.
Create a feature flag — give it a key, a type, and a default value.
Read the flag in your app via the SDK — one isOn() call is all it takes.

The snippet below shows the minimal SDK setup you will build toward in Lesson 5.

import { GrowthBook } from "@growthbook/growthbook";

const gb = new GrowthBook({
  apiHost: "https://cdn.growthbook.io",
  clientKey: "sdk-abc123",          // from SDK Connection page
});

await gb.loadFeatures();

if (gb.isOn("dark-mode")) {
  enableDarkMode();
}

import { GrowthBook } from "@growthbook/growthbook";

const gb = new GrowthBook({
  apiHost: "https://cdn.growthbook.io",
  clientKey: "sdk-abc123",          // from SDK Connection page
});

await gb.loadFeatures();

if (gb.isOn("dark-mode")) {
  enableDarkMode();
}