Before throwing the first stone at me, think twice and calm down so I can explain why I am doing this.
For a long time, I did what most developers do: I deployed everything on the big cloud providers. AWS, managed services, endless dashboards, monthly bills that always seemed to creep up…
It worked — until it didn’t.
At some point, I realized I wasn’t paying for “infrastructure,” I was paying for complexity. So I decided to leave the traditional cloud setup behind and move to something simpler: Coolify.
Before getting to know why we switch from cloud to coolify, ask yourself "what is the cloud?"
What is the cloud?
As many might know, the "cloud" is a myth, it does not exist. What exist is someone's else computer which you are running your code on and paying the person per resources use, per time spent, often known as the pay-as-you-go billing method.
Conventionally, The cloud is a network of remote servers on the internet that store, manage, and process data, allowing access to files and services from anywhere.
Why I Left the Cloud?
The cloud is powerful, but it comes with tradeoffs:
- Costs grow fast, even for small projects
- Managed services are convenient… until you need to migrate
- Too many moving parts for simple apps
- Vendor lock-in is real I wanted something closer to the old-school VPS experience, but with modern developer tooling. That’s where Coolify came in.
What is Coolify?
Coolify is basically an open-source alternative to platforms like:
- Vercel
- Heroku
- Netlify
- Render But instead of deploying on their infrastructure… You deploy on your own server.
It gives you:
- Git-based deployments (Webhook or Manual)
- Docker support
- One-click databases
- Automatic SSL
- Monitoring
- Multi-app hosting All with a clean UI.
My Infrastructure Setup
I wanted something:
- Affordable
- Reliable
- Simple
- Scalable enough for side projects and small production apps So I went with:
- 1 VPS
- Docker
- Coolify managing everything
- OVH as the provider The setup is minimal:
Internet → VPS → Coolify → Apps + Databases
Coolify becomes your control panel for deploying:
- Web apps
- APIs
- Postgres / MySQL
- Redis
- Background workers
I personally used OVH, mainly because of the price-to-performance ratio.
OVH servers tend to offer:
- Strong CPUs
- Good bandwidth
- Cheap monthly pricing
- European hosting options
My Setup
I purchased a VPS from OVH cloud for a year at less than USD100 flat rate.
How to Install Coolify (Step-by-Step)
- Provision a Fresh VPS Ubuntu 22.04 works best. Make sure you have:
- Root SSH access
- Ports 80/443 open
A domain name ready (optional but recommended)
Run the Coolify Install Script
SSH into your server:
ssh root@your-server-ip
Then run:
curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash
This installs:
- Docker
- Docker Compose
- Coolify
- Access the Dashboard Once installed, visit:
http://your-server-ip:8000
From there you can:
- Create projects
- Connect GitHub/GitLab
- Deploy your first app
- Replace the default domain with yours.
Note: Sometimes this might not work if you do not open the port 8000 on the server.
# Check ports status
sudo ufw status
# Open inbound requests to port 8000
sudo ufw allow 8000
# Reload firewall
sudo ufw reload
- Add a Domain + SSL Coolify makes this ridiculously easy:
- Add your domain in the app settings
- Enable SSL
- It automatically uses Let’s Encrypt No need to manually Nginx configs. Coolify uses traefik and caddy in replacement of nginx.
What I Host on Coolify Now
Since switching, I’m running:
- Personal projects
- APIs
- PostgreSQL databases
- Redis
- Background workers
- Internal tools All from one dashboard. It feels like having my own mini-Heroku.
Little tip: This might be life saving to turn on proxied connections on Cloudflare for your domain to avoid some common attacks related to proxy like DDoS.
Now what will you do?
Just so you know, I am an AWS certifies solution architect. I understand products can not start to be built on big giant solutions but we rather turn to use it when we find real need for it.
Top comments (0)