DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Coolify Has a Free Self-Hosting Platform for Any App

Coolify is a free, open-source alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Vercel. It lets you deploy any application to your own server with a beautiful dashboard.

What Is Coolify?

Coolify is an all-in-one PaaS that you install on your own server. It supports deploying applications, databases, and services with just a few clicks.

What makes it unique:

  • Beautiful modern web UI
  • One-click deployments from Git
  • Automatic SSL (Let's Encrypt + Cloudflare)
  • Built-in monitoring and logging
  • Supports Docker, Docker Compose, Dockerfiles, Buildpacks
  • One-click services: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, and 100+ more
  • Automatic backups
  • Webhook-based auto-deploy
  • Multiple server management from one dashboard
  • Wildcard domains

Quick Start

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

That's it. Open http://your-ip:8000 and you have a full PaaS.

Deploy an App

  1. Connect your GitHub/GitLab repository
  2. Select branch and build method
  3. Click Deploy

Coolify auto-detects your framework:

  • Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit
  • Laravel, Django, Rails
  • Go, Rust, Java
  • Any Dockerfile

One-Click Services

Deploy databases and tools instantly:

  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, ClickHouse
  • Tools: Plausible, Umami, Ghost, WordPress, Gitea, MinIO
  • Dev: Supabase, Appwrite, n8n, Nocodb
  • Monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Uptime Kuma

Why Coolify vs Alternatives?

Feature Heroku Vercel Coolify
Monthly cost $5-25/app $0-20/app $0 (your VPS)
Databases Paid addon No Free (one-click)
Custom domain Yes Yes Yes
SSL Yes Yes Yes (auto)
Docker support Limited No Full
Multiple servers No No Yes
Backups No No Built-in
Open source No No Yes

Cost Savings

Typical SaaS stack:

  • Vercel Pro: $20/mo
  • Supabase Pro: $25/mo
  • Redis Cloud: $10/mo
  • Monitoring: $15/mo Total: $70/month

Coolify on Hetzner:

  • VPS: €5/mo (~$5.50)
  • Everything else: $0 Total: $5.50/month

Save $774/year. Run unlimited apps.

Multiple Server Management

Connect multiple servers to one Coolify instance:

  • Production on powerful dedicated server
  • Staging on cheap VPS
  • Manage everything from one dashboard

Automatic Backups

Settings → Backups → Enable
- Frequency: daily/weekly/custom
- Destination: S3, local, or remote server
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Databases are backed up automatically.

Environment Variables

  • Manage per-application
  • Secrets are encrypted at rest
  • Shared variables across apps
  • Preview environment support

Who Uses Coolify?

With 37K+ GitHub stars (fastest growing PaaS):

  • Indie hackers replacing Heroku
  • Startups cutting cloud costs
  • Agencies managing client projects
  • Companies wanting data sovereignty

Get Started

  1. Get a VPS ($5-10/month)
  2. Run one install command
  3. Open web dashboard
  4. Deploy your first app in 2 minutes

Your own Heroku + Vercel + Supabase. On your hardware. Forever free.


Need data pipelines for your self-hosted apps? Check out my web scraping tools on Apify — extract data from any website automatically. Custom solutions: spinov001@gmail.com

Top comments (0)