Alex Spinov

Posted on Mar 26

Coolify Is Free — Self-Host Any App With a Heroku-Like Experience (Open Source)

#devops #opensource #selfhosted #tutorial

Heroku Is Dead. Coolify Is the Open-Source Replacement.

Coolify gives you a Heroku/Vercel/Netlify experience on your own server. Deploy from GitHub, auto-SSL, databases, and monitoring. Completely free and open-source.

What You Get

One-click deploy from GitHub/GitLab
Automatic SSL certificates (Let us Encrypt)
Built-in databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB)
Docker and Docker Compose support
Preview environments for PRs
Monitoring and logs
Backups

Install (5 Minutes)

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

Runs on any VPS ($5/mo from Hetzner, DigitalOcean, or Vultr).

Deploy a Next.js App

Connect GitHub repo in Coolify dashboard
Select branch
Click Deploy
Auto-detected as Next.js, builds and deploys

Deploy Any Docker App

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
  pgdata:

Push to GitHub. Coolify builds and deploys automatically.

Built-in Databases

One-click install:

PostgreSQL
MySQL/MariaDB
MongoDB
Redis
ClickHouse

Each gets its own container with automatic backups.

Coolify vs Alternatives

Feature	Coolify	Heroku	Vercel	Railway
Price	Free (self-hosted)	$5-25/mo	Free-$20/mo	$5/mo
Docker support	Full	Limited	No	Yes
Databases	Built-in	Add-on	No	Built-in
Custom domain	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSL	Auto	Auto	Auto	Auto
Self-hosted	Yes	No	No	No
Open source	Yes	No	No	No

Cost Comparison

Heroku (2 apps + Postgres): $20/mo
Railway (2 apps + Postgres): $10/mo
Coolify on Hetzner VPS: $4/mo (unlimited apps)

One $4/mo VPS can run 10+ apps with Coolify.

Who Should Use Coolify

Indie hackers who want to avoid vendor lock-in
Teams tired of paying $20/mo per app
Anyone who wants Heroku DX on their own hardware
Developers learning DevOps

More | GitHub

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