{"slug": "coolify", "name": "Coolify", "category": "selfhosted", "category_name": "Self-hosted and home server", "description": "Open-source, self-hostable PaaS for deploying apps, databases and services on your own servers.", "recommenders": 10, "commenters": 20, "warners": 1, "score": 10.078, "rising": 0.71, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-23", "why": "Liked as an open-source, self-hosted replacement for Heroku, Railway, Netlify or Vercel that runs Docker apps on a cheap VPS like Hetzner, where users only pay for the server.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 10, "neutral": 5, "compare": 4, "warn": 1}, "spark": [1, 1, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 2], "listed": true, "loved": ["Low hosting cost", "Hosted PaaS replacement"], "caveat": "Configuration complexity", "short_quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "icon": true, "domain": "coolify.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://coolify.io", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Coolify"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as an open-source, self-hosted replacement for Heroku, Railway, Netlify or Vercel", "cites": [{"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 803022704, "item_id": 50188919, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188919", "by": "shinycode", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "excerpt": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting database", "switched_from": "Railway", "story": "Security Disclosure"}, {"id": 732697344, "item_id": 45793584, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793584", "by": "jimmydin7", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "netlify, render -> coolify", "excerpt": "for example: netlify, render -> coolify zapier -> n8n", "context": "", "use_case": "open source alternative to Netlify/Render", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?"}, {"id": 769338833, "item_id": 48083677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677", "by": "djyde", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since Coolify is open-source and free, I only had to cover the cost of a VPS", "excerpt": "I've transitioned between cloud services and self-hosting a few times: 1. Vercel Phase My first project used Vercel. Since my project was Next.js, the experience was decent. But as my project gained some users, I found that even for projects under 100 users, I needed to pay $20 per month. Since my service didn't require high performance, this cost felt steep. 2. Self-host Phase (Hetzner + Coolify) Later, I started se", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left"}]}, {"text": " that runs Docker apps on a cheap VPS like Hetzner, where users only pay for the server.", "cites": [{"id": 746361986, "item_id": 46647624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647624", "by": "barishnamazov", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better.", "excerpt": "I use a self hosted HedgeDoc with Fail2Ban to deal with this. A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better. Separately, be cautious of people putting illegal content on your platform.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: mdto.page \u2013 Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly"}, {"id": 751638976, "item_id": 46977436, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46977436", "by": "vcanales", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.", "excerpt": "I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Railway Global Outage"}, {"id": 769338833, "item_id": 48083677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677", "by": "djyde", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since Coolify is open-source and free, I only had to cover the cost of a VPS", "excerpt": "I've transitioned between cloud services and self-hosting a few times: 1. Vercel Phase My first project used Vercel. Since my project was Next.js, the experience was decent. But as my project gained some users, I found that even for projects under 100 users, I needed to pay $20 per month. Since my service didn't require high performance, this cost felt steep. 2. Self-host Phase (Hetzner + Coolify) Later, I started se", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left"}, {"id": 780264608, "item_id": 48766538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766538", "by": "jdoe1337halo", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based", "excerpt": "I'd love to switch to Podman but I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based, so I am kind of locked into that ecosystem for now", "context": "", "use_case": "deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Podman v6.0.0"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveats are a more involved setup with many configuration options", "cites": [{"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 767584722, "item_id": 47974045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974045", "by": "sharemywin", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Coolify: Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.", "excerpt": "you might look at this for feature ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1lutdul/we_built_disco_an_opensource_paas_to_selfhost_web/ tldr; We built an open-source, MIT-licensed PaaS that: Lets you scale beyond a single server. Uses API keys for team access, not SSH keys. Has a simple CLI and web UI without overwhelming configuration. Includes built-in database management (disco postgres create). Is funde", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 761370449, "item_id": 47585653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585653", "by": "benja123", "date": "2026-03-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server", "excerpt": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server, with Tailscale keeping non-public services behind the tailnet. It was my first time using Tailscale and overall the experience was good, though I did hit a few Coolify and Docker related hickups along the way. If you see holes in the setup, I\u2019d genuinely like to know. I'll fix the post as I learn. I hope this can help other people running a similar setu", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment platform", "switched_from": "", "story": "How I setup my Hetzner server with Coolify, Tailscale, UFW, and Cloudflare"}]}, {"text": ", and some users moving to alternatives such as Dokploy or Komodo.", "cites": [{"id": 801912945, "item_id": 50119559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50119559", "by": "TheSecondMouse", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "compare", "quote": "There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy.", "excerpt": "I use Dokploy for that. There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy. https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted app deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 802669185, "item_id": 50166824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166824", "by": "ChaseRensberger", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "wasnt a big fan of coolify", "excerpt": "wasnt a big fan of coolify but i love https://komo.do/", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "NixOS is making me less afraid"}, {"id": 740478482, "item_id": 46279905, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279905", "by": "zenapollo", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally", "excerpt": "I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on U", "context": "self-hosting for about 6 months", "use_case": "self-hosting apps", "switched_from": "Dokploy", "story": "Umbrel \u2013 Personal Cloud"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Low hosting cost", "summary": "Running it on a cheap VPS like Hetzner means paying only for the server.", "quotes": [{"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 746361986, "item_id": 46647624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647624", "by": "barishnamazov", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better.", "excerpt": "I use a self hosted HedgeDoc with Fail2Ban to deal with this. A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better. Separately, be cautious of people putting illegal content on your platform.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: mdto.page \u2013 Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly"}, {"id": 769338833, "item_id": 48083677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677", "by": "djyde", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since Coolify is open-source and free, I only had to cover the cost of a VPS", "excerpt": "I've transitioned between cloud services and self-hosting a few times: 1. Vercel Phase My first project used Vercel. Since my project was Next.js, the experience was decent. But as my project gained some users, I found that even for projects under 100 users, I needed to pay $20 per month. Since my service didn't require high performance, this cost felt steep. 2. Self-host Phase (Hetzner + Coolify) Later, I started se", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left"}]}, {"label": "Hosted PaaS replacement", "summary": "Commenters moved to it from Heroku, Railway, Netlify, Render and Vercel.", "quotes": [{"id": 803022704, "item_id": 50188919, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188919", "by": "shinycode", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "excerpt": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting database", "switched_from": "Railway", "story": "Security Disclosure"}, {"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 732697344, "item_id": 45793584, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793584", "by": "jimmydin7", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "netlify, render -> coolify", "excerpt": "for example: netlify, render -> coolify zapier -> n8n", "context": "", "use_case": "open source alternative to Netlify/Render", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?"}]}, {"label": "Docker deployments", "summary": "Used to deploy Docker apps, with the default Traefik proxy working without trouble.", "quotes": [{"id": 801799184, "item_id": 50112449, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112449", "by": "kalcode", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for docker apps usually smaller apps", "excerpt": "For me, I say it depends on the service. I use Coolify for docker apps usually smaller apps, and LXC when docker won't cut it for whatever reason.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "deploying docker apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 780264608, "item_id": 48766538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766538", "by": "jdoe1337halo", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based", "excerpt": "I'd love to switch to Podman but I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based, so I am kind of locked into that ecosystem for now", "context": "", "use_case": "deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Podman v6.0.0"}, {"id": 796809248, "item_id": 49800578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49800578", "by": "Algernoon", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use coolify myself but I\u2019ve not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far.", "excerpt": "It seems to be used by many large companies but with less open source projects of size. I would be interested in trying this proxy in the future if you do opensource it. I use coolify myself but I\u2019ve not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bwbach, My Guardian Goblin"}]}, {"label": "Open source", "summary": "Seen as free, open-source PaaS software on par with VC-backed offerings.", "quotes": [{"id": 777791410, "item_id": 48611963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611963", "by": "shimman", "date": "2026-06-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "open source PaaS software on-par with what VC companies offer (dokploy, coolify, or komodo)", "excerpt": "I use forgejo myself but both are great choices. Self hosting has improved dramatically over the last decade. So many things that I would never think we'd have access to, like open source PaaS software on-par with what VC companies offer (dokploy, coolify, or komodo).", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Due to spam on GitHub, what platforms can I move my projects?"}, {"id": 769338833, "item_id": 48083677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677", "by": "djyde", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since Coolify is open-source and free, I only had to cover the cost of a VPS", "excerpt": "I've transitioned between cloud services and self-hosting a few times: 1. Vercel Phase My first project used Vercel. Since my project was Next.js, the experience was decent. But as my project gained some users, I found that even for projects under 100 users, I needed to pay $20 per month. Since my service didn't require high performance, this cost felt steep. 2. Self-host Phase (Hetzner + Coolify) Later, I started se", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left"}, {"id": 741401809, "item_id": 46337613, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46337613", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "excerpt": "Better yet, self host Postgres on your own open source PaaS with Coolify, Dokploy, or Canine, and then you can also self host all your apps on your VPS too. I use Dokploy but I'm looking into Canine, and I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Go ahead, self-host Postgres"}]}, {"label": "Well liked", "summary": "Users report loving it and say many have used it with great success.", "quotes": [{"id": 732698480, "item_id": 45793655, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793655", "by": "jimmydin7", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i am currently using coolify, and I love it.", "excerpt": "i am currently using coolify, and I love it. I want to find a self hostable json database, which is more than a json file. Maybe self hostable alternative of jsonbin.io?", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?"}, {"id": 741401809, "item_id": 46337613, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46337613", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "excerpt": "Better yet, self host Postgres on your own open source PaaS with Coolify, Dokploy, or Canine, and then you can also self host all your apps on your VPS too. I use Dokploy but I'm looking into Canine, and I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Go ahead, self-host Postgres"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Configuration complexity", "summary": "The number of configuration options can feel overwhelming, and setup is more involved than hosted services.", "quotes": [{"id": 767584722, "item_id": 47974045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974045", "by": "sharemywin", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Coolify: Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.", "excerpt": "you might look at this for feature ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1lutdul/we_built_disco_an_opensource_paas_to_selfhost_web/ tldr; We built an open-source, MIT-licensed PaaS that: Lets you scale beyond a single server. Uses API keys for team access, not SSH keys. Has a simple CLI and web UI without overwhelming configuration. Includes built-in database management (disco postgres create). Is funde", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}]}, {"label": "Users switch away", "summary": "Some commenters moved to Dokploy, Komodo or plain docker compose instead.", "quotes": [{"id": 801912945, "item_id": 50119559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50119559", "by": "TheSecondMouse", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "compare", "quote": "There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy.", "excerpt": "I use Dokploy for that. There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy. https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted app deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 802669185, "item_id": 50166824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166824", "by": "ChaseRensberger", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "wasnt a big fan of coolify", "excerpt": "wasnt a big fan of coolify but i love https://komo.do/", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "NixOS is making me less afraid"}, {"id": 740478482, "item_id": 46279905, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279905", "by": "zenapollo", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally", "excerpt": "I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on U", "context": "self-hosting for about 6 months", "use_case": "self-hosting apps", "switched_from": "Dokploy", "story": "Umbrel \u2013 Personal Cloud"}]}, {"label": "Docker lock-in", "summary": "Because it is Docker based, one user feels locked out of switching to Podman.", "quotes": [{"id": 780264608, "item_id": 48766538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766538", "by": "jdoe1337halo", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based", "excerpt": "I'd love to switch to Podman but I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based, so I am kind of locked into that ecosystem for now", "context": "", "use_case": "deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Podman v6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Setup hiccups", "summary": "One user hit a few Coolify and Docker related issues while setting it up.", "quotes": [{"id": 761370449, "item_id": 47585653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585653", "by": "benja123", "date": "2026-03-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server", "excerpt": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server, with Tailscale keeping non-public services behind the tailnet. It was my first time using Tailscale and overall the experience was good, though I did hit a few Coolify and Docker related hickups along the way. If you see holes in the setup, I\u2019d genuinely like to know. I'll fix the post as I learn. I hope this can help other people running a similar setu", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment platform", "switched_from": "", "story": "How I setup my Hetzner server with Coolify, Tailscale, UFW, and Cloudflare"}]}], "who": [{"by": "kalcode", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112449", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "andalinmicphew", "context": "runs a bike routing service", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49972510", "date": "2026-10-06"}, {"by": "kuczmama", "context": "former Heroku user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "date": "2026-02-06"}, {"by": "zenapollo", "context": "self-hosting for about 6 months", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279905", "date": "2025-12-15"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for VPS hosting", "Heroku alternative", "for Docker apps", "for small projects"], "use_cases": ["self-hosted paas", "self-hosted deployment", "managing containers", "self-hosting database", "self-hosted app deployment", "deploying docker apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "dokploy", "name": "Dokploy", "co": 6, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "railway", "name": "Railway", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vercel", "name": "Vercel", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "heroku", "name": "Heroku", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "komodo", "name": "Komodo", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "docker-compose", "name": "Docker Compose", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "kubernetes", "name": "Kubernetes", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "cloudflare-workers", "name": "Cloudflare Workers", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188228", "title": "Security Disclosure", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793571", "title": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165484", "title": "NixOS is making me less afraid", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971230", "title": "Find the flattest route between any two points in SF", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "compare": 2, "recommend": 2, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803301569, "item_id": 50206348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206348", "by": "CrimsonRain", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Right now I use ECS and coolify in some cases.", "excerpt": "Depending on use case. Right now I use ECS and coolify in some cases. My point was just use the cloud directly want their tools instead of something like this.", "context": "", "use_case": "managing containers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Security Disclosure"}, {"id": 803022704, "item_id": 50188919, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188919", "by": "shinycode", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "excerpt": "I\u2019m lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting database", "switched_from": "Railway", "story": "Security Disclosure"}, {"id": 802669185, "item_id": 50166824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166824", "by": "ChaseRensberger", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "wasnt a big fan of coolify", "excerpt": "wasnt a big fan of coolify but i love https://komo.do/", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "NixOS is making me less afraid"}, {"id": 801912945, "item_id": 50119559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50119559", "by": "TheSecondMouse", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "compare", "quote": "There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy.", "excerpt": "I use Dokploy for that. There is also Coolify, but I have migrated away from it, not for any reason other than I prefer the interface for Dokploy. https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted app deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801799184, "item_id": 50112449, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112449", "by": "kalcode", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for docker apps usually smaller apps", "excerpt": "For me, I say it depends on the service. I use Coolify for docker apps usually smaller apps, and LXC when docker won't cut it for whatever reason.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "deploying docker apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800275505, "item_id": 50017219, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50017219", "by": "prolly97", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "using Dokploy (also tried Coolify)", "excerpt": "Hehe, I started out with good and frugal intentions but my $5/month Hetzner VPS has turned into a $100/month bill. I love exploring all kinds of data, but obviously, if you just do that on an ad hoc basis, the data gets stale. So I just setup some continuous workers and nighly batch jobs that ingest and keep certain data up to date :) I've opened some of the data up to the public: cvrdb.dk for danish companies (worki", "context": "", "use_case": "deploying projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 799560160, "item_id": 49972510, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49972510", "by": "andalinmicphew", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "We run it on a single coolify box from someone\u2019s house. 6 core, 32GB ddr4 memory box. The actual routing query are compute intensive but only momentarily. More cores and memory means higher concurrency but we\u2019ve never had an issue with load in the Bay Area with a few hundred users a week. We used to run it on a k8s cluster but we cut it down to save on power and infrastructure management overhead.", "context": "runs a bike routing service", "use_case": "self-hosting routing service", "switched_from": "Kubernetes", "story": "Find the flattest route between any two points in SF"}, {"id": 796809248, "item_id": 49800578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49800578", "by": "Algernoon", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use coolify myself but I\u2019ve not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far.", "excerpt": "It seems to be used by many large companies but with less open source projects of size. I would be interested in trying this proxy in the future if you do opensource it. I use coolify myself but I\u2019ve not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bwbach, My Guardian Goblin"}, {"id": 780264608, "item_id": 48766538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766538", "by": "jdoe1337halo", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based", "excerpt": "I'd love to switch to Podman but I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based, so I am kind of locked into that ecosystem for now", "context": "", "use_case": "deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Podman v6.0.0"}, {"id": 777791410, "item_id": 48611963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611963", "by": "shimman", "date": "2026-06-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "open source PaaS software on-par with what VC companies offer (dokploy, coolify, or komodo)", "excerpt": "I use forgejo myself but both are great choices. Self hosting has improved dramatically over the last decade. So many things that I would never think we'd have access to, like open source PaaS software on-par with what VC companies offer (dokploy, coolify, or komodo).", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Due to spam on GitHub, what platforms can I move my projects?"}, {"id": 776828016, "item_id": 48551751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48551751", "by": "sumonoahid", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "compare", "quote": "There are already Vercel, Railways, Coolify, Dokploy and 100 more. Glad you asked. Those are great.", "excerpt": "Why another paas ? There are already Vercel, Railways, Coolify, Dokploy and 100 more. Glad you asked. Those are great. But Some feels too many features, outdated and other just suck your bank balance when your project get more and more users. I tried to balance those. No surprise bills, No Vendor lock. You own your VPS, data and everything. You are responsible when things goes wrong. Who is it for? - Well pretty much", "context": "indie hacker who built own PaaS", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why did I create my own PaaS as indie hacker and made it open-source?"}, {"id": 769338833, "item_id": 48083677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677", "by": "djyde", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since Coolify is open-source and free, I only had to cover the cost of a VPS", "excerpt": "I've transitioned between cloud services and self-hosting a few times: 1. Vercel Phase My first project used Vercel. Since my project was Next.js, the experience was decent. But as my project gained some users, I found that even for projects under 100 users, I needed to pay $20 per month. Since my service didn't require high performance, this cost felt steep. 2. Self-host Phase (Hetzner + Coolify) Later, I started se", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left"}, {"id": 767584722, "item_id": 47974045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974045", "by": "sharemywin", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Coolify: Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.", "excerpt": "you might look at this for feature ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1lutdul/we_built_disco_an_opensource_paas_to_selfhost_web/ tldr; We built an open-source, MIT-licensed PaaS that: Lets you scale beyond a single server. Uses API keys for team access, not SSH keys. Has a simple CLI and web UI without overwhelming configuration. Includes built-in database management (disco postgres create). Is funde", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 761370449, "item_id": 47585653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585653", "by": "benja123", "date": "2026-03-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server", "excerpt": "This is the setup I use for running Coolify on a Hetzner server, with Tailscale keeping non-public services behind the tailnet. It was my first time using Tailscale and overall the experience was good, though I did hit a few Coolify and Docker related hickups along the way. If you see holes in the setup, I\u2019d genuinely like to know. I'll fix the post as I learn. I hope this can help other people running a similar setu", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted deployment platform", "switched_from": "", "story": "How I setup my Hetzner server with Coolify, Tailscale, UFW, and Cloudflare"}, {"id": 751638976, "item_id": 46977436, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46977436", "by": "vcanales", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.", "excerpt": "I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS deployments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Railway Global Outage"}, {"id": 750636624, "item_id": 46914789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914789", "by": "kuczmama", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My personal favorite.  It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "excerpt": "This is a sad day. I used heroku for years (in the past). A few alternatives to consider - https://render.com/ - this is very close to heroku - https://coolify.io/ - My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.", "context": "former Heroku user", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "Heroku", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 746361986, "item_id": 46647624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647624", "by": "barishnamazov", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better.", "excerpt": "I use a self hosted HedgeDoc with Fail2Ban to deal with this. A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better. Separately, be cautious of people putting illegal content on your platform.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: mdto.page \u2013 Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly"}, {"id": 741401809, "item_id": 46337613, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46337613", "by": "satvikpendem", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "excerpt": "Better yet, self host Postgres on your own open source PaaS with Coolify, Dokploy, or Canine, and then you can also self host all your apps on your VPS too. I use Dokploy but I'm looking into Canine, and I know many have used Coolify with great success.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted PaaS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Go ahead, self-host Postgres"}, {"id": 740478482, "item_id": 46279905, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279905", "by": "zenapollo", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally", "excerpt": "I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on U", "context": "self-hosting for about 6 months", "use_case": "self-hosting apps", "switched_from": "Dokploy", "story": "Umbrel \u2013 Personal Cloud"}, {"id": 732698480, "item_id": 45793655, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793655", "by": "jimmydin7", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i am currently using coolify, and I love it.", "excerpt": "i am currently using coolify, and I love it. I want to find a self hostable json database, which is more than a json file. Maybe self hostable alternative of jsonbin.io?", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?"}, {"id": 732697344, "item_id": 45793584, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793584", "by": "jimmydin7", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "netlify, render -> coolify", "excerpt": "for example: netlify, render -> coolify zapier -> n8n", "context": "", "use_case": "open source alternative to Netlify/Render", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?"}]}