Coolify

What Coolify does

Coolify turns one or more Linux servers into a small private platform-as-a-service. You connect a server over SSH, point Coolify at a Git repository, a Dockerfile or an existing image, and it builds a container, routes a domain to it with an HTTPS certificate and keeps a deployment history. The README describes it directly as a self-hostable alternative to Heroku, Netlify and Vercel.

Build options cover most projects: Nixpacks or Railpack detect the language and build an image automatically, the Static build pack serves files that are already built, and Dockerfile or Docker Compose builds give full control. Every push to a branch can trigger a deployment, and pull requests can get their own preview deployment on a generated subdomain, with environment variables kept separate from production. Coolify removes a preview when its pull request is closed or merged.

Besides your own code, Coolify can run managed databases and a catalogue of more than 360 one-click services, with persistent storage, generated credentials and scheduled backups.

Servers and scaling

The recommended layout is one server for Coolify itself and one or more servers for the workloads. Builds run on the deployment server by default, but you can add a separate build server so heavy builds do not slow down running apps. Traefik is the default reverse proxy; Caddy is an alternative.

An application can be deployed to several servers at once, but this only starts one copy on each server. Coolify does not balance traffic between them, so you need an external load balancer, and the feature does not work for Docker Compose applications or for applications with persistent storage. There is no global edge network: your sites are served from the servers you connect, and a CDN is something you add yourself.

Self-hosting Coolify

Installation is a single script that sets up Docker and starts Coolify’s own containers: the Laravel application, PostgreSQL and Redis. A manual method exists for servers with an existing Docker setup or without root access. The documentation lists Debian, Ubuntu LTS, Red Hat-based, SUSE, Arch, Alpine and 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS as known to work, on amd64 or arm64, with a minimum of 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of free disk.

Two steps matter right after installing. The first person to open the registration page becomes the admin and gets root access to the server, so create that account straight away (or pre-create it with environment variables). And back up /data/coolify/source/.env, which holds the key that encrypts Coolify’s database values. If you later remove Coolify, the containers it deployed keep running.

Hosted version

Coolify Cloud is a paid service in which the Coolify team runs the dashboard and control plane for you, on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany. It does not include servers for your apps: you still connect your own machines over SSH and remain responsible for their operating system updates, firewall, data and backups. Billing depends on how many servers you connect.

Limitations

Coolify gives you the workflow of a hosted PaaS, but not its operations team. Patching servers, sizing them, monitoring disk space and backing up application data stay with you. Horizontal scaling is basic, and there is no serverless functions runtime or edge network like Vercel’s or Netlify’s. Because pull-request previews run code from the pull request on your server, keep preview access limited to repository members, which is the default.

Who it suits

Coolify suits developers, agencies and small teams who want Heroku-style or Vercel-style deployments on servers they rent or own, and who are comfortable looking after a Linux server. It is the broadest option in this category, with a web interface, many build methods and a large service catalogue, all in one Apache-2.0 codebase.