Coolify: the self-hosted Vercel alternative

This site deploys to Vercel because that's the right tool for it. But plenty of projects — client sites, internal tools, side projects — end up on a small server someone already pays for. Coolify is the open-source answer to running that box like a Vercel: push to Git, get a deployment, HTTPS, logs, backups — no YAML babysitting.

What Coolify actually is

A free, Apache-2.0, open-source, self-hostable PaaS — built by the coollabsio team (Andras Bacsai) and actively developed. The v4 line is current (v4.6.0, November 2026) with 700+ releases shipped. It manages servers over SSH: apps, databases and 360+ prebuilt one-click services, wired together in a web dashboard or an API. If you stop using Coolify, your running services keep running — it orchestrates plain Docker, it doesn't own your containers.

Requirements

• OS — Linux only. Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL-family, Alpine, openSUSE, Arch, and Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit.
• CPU / RAM / Disk — 2 cores, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB free disk minimum — and 4 GB is the comfortable floor for real apps.
• Arch — amd64 or arm64.
• Access — root over SSH; ports 80 and 443 free; port 8000 for the first dashboard login.
• Fresh box recommended — the installer owns 80/443 with its own proxy; don't fight an existing nginx or Apache.

Install in one line

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

# dashboard at http://<server-ip>:8000
# back up /data/coolify/source/.env once you're in

The installer puts Docker on the box, writes everything under /data/coolify, and starts the panel. First task once it boots: create the admin account immediately — the dashboard is unprotected until you do — and back up the generated secrets before deploying anything.

What you get day to day

• Git deploys — GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea; push to deploy, pull-request previews, rollback to retained images.
• Builds — Nixpacks, Railpack, Dockerfile, Docker Compose or a prebuilt image.
• One-click services — 360+: databases, Plausible, Umami, n8n, Grafana and friends, with persistent volumes and generated credentials.
• Databases — managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis with scheduled backups pointed at S3-compatible storage.
• Domains & TLS — custom domains with automatic Let's Encrypt certificates; Traefik by default, Caddy also supported.
• Teams — role-based access; your contractor sees staging, not production secrets.
• Automation — a full API, a CLI, and an MCP server, so scripts and agents can deploy too.
• Fleet views — metrics, logs, and beta server-patching across multiple servers.

Where it bites

• Fresh box strongly recommended — it will not coexist gracefully with a hand-managed proxy on 80/443.
• 2 GB RAM is a floor, not comfort. Real apps want 4 GB+ headroom.
• It moves at startup speed — v4.5 landed passkeys, fleet metrics and a canvas UI within weeks. Pin yourself to the stable channel and read the changelog before clicking Update.
• You're the SRE — backups, monitoring, restores, security patches. The tool deploys; it doesn't babysit.
• Coolify Cloud exists if running the panel itself is out of scope — paid, but zero-patching.

Coolify or Dokploy?

Twins with different accents. Both are free, self-hosted, no lock-in. Dokploy is Swarm-flavored with an apps-first panel — nicer when a multi-node cluster is in your future. Coolify is plain Docker with the bigger service catalog and tighter SSH management — nicer when day one means Postgres, n8n and a static site on one six-dollar box. If you're unsure: pick Coolify for services, Dokploy for fleets.

Who it's for

Side projects, client work on owned servers, homelabs that graduated — anywhere 'Heroku' used to fit and the monthly bill doesn't. Docs at coolify.io; source at github.com/coollabsio/coolify. Star it, read the changelog, then run it.