Coolify
Self-hostable PaaS alternative to Vercel/Heroku
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Oct 2026
Coolify is a self-hosted alternative to Vercel, Netlify and Heroku: connect your own servers over SSH, and it deploys apps from Git with pull-request previews, provisions databases, sets up HTTPS and reverse proxies, and offers 300+ one-click services. Apache 2.0, and no feature is held back behind the paywall.
Coolify itself needs 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 10 GB of disk, and the recommended setup puts it on its own server with your apps on others. v4 left beta in April 2026 and patches land fast, sometimes with breaking changes. Security is the real ops burden: 61 advisories were published in 2026, 16 of them critical, many letting authenticated users run commands on your servers. Keep it patched, don't give untrusted users team access, and don't expose the dashboard publicly.
Self-hosted is free forever with every feature. Coolify Cloud runs the control panel for you on Coolify's infrastructure and deploys to servers you connect: $5 a month covers 2 servers, plus $3 per additional server ($4 and $2.70 billed annually). It backs up only the dashboard, not your app data. Solo devs and small teams: self-host, or pay $5 to skip running the panel. Next to Vercel Pro at $20 a month, either is cheap.
The catch: when a deployment fails at 2 AM on self-hosted, there's no support team, just you and the Docker logs. Cloud adds only limited email support.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
free self hosted paid cloudFree (self-hosted): Every feature, Apache 2.0, community support. Coolify needs 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 10 GB disk; the recommended layout runs Coolify on one server and your apps on others.
Paid (Coolify Cloud, USD): Monthly: $5 base (connects 2 servers) plus $3 per additional server. Annual: $4 base plus $2.70 per additional server. Coolify hosts the dashboard on its own infrastructure; your apps run on servers you bring and pay for. Same features as self-hosted, plus email alerts and limited email support. Only the dashboard database is backed up. No trial. Each team needs its own subscription.
Versus PaaS: Vercel Pro starts at $20/month; Railway Hobby is a $5 minimum that includes $5 of usage.
Self-host free with every feature. Coolify Cloud is $5 a month for 2 servers plus $3 per extra, and you still pay for the servers.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free self-hosted, or $5/month Cloud to skip running the panel
- Small team
- free; patch on every release and limit team access
- Medium team
- Cloud or self-hosted; plan your own app backups either way
- Large team
- Evaluate carefully; security history and limited support matter at scale
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