Coolify: An Open-Source Self-Hosted Alternative to Vercel

Preface

Yesterday I mentioned I've been tinkering with Coolify lately; today I'll share some of that experience.

Coolify

The most accurate way to position Coolify is: an open-source, self-hostable PaaS platform. You can think of it as a self-hosted alternative to Vercel, or as putting a Heroku/Vercel-like UI on top of Docker.

Some of you may have used 1panel, but Coolify and 1panel are still different. 1panel focuses on server operations and maintenance; you can think of it as adding a graphical interface to your server.

Coolify focuses on application lifecycle management (ALM). What it delivers is very similar to Vercel: after you push code to GitHub, it automatically builds a Docker image, auto-deploys, auto-configures domain SSL, and auto-performs zero-downtime updates.

OK, that all sounds great, but Coolify is actually better suited to overseas servers. You need a clear, unobstructed network to use it smoothly. For servers in China, the traditional Docker deployment approach is still better, since it's easier to switch various image registries.

UI

Back to the main topic. After I got Coolify set up, I deployed a few services.

The interface is fairly simple—not as good-looking as Vercel.

Installing Coolify on a Server

Installing it on a server is easy.

Coolify is essentially a PHP (Laravel) application running in Docker.

For installation, you can refer to the official docs: https://coolify.io/docs/get-started/installation

There's a script for one-click install:

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

It's recommended to install on a fresh server to avoid conflicts with existing services.

I also found a tool for managing Coolify from the command line: https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify-cli

But the configuration is a bit of a hassle, and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Usage

So far I've only used the service and docker deployment types.

On the project page, click the New button to add a resource.

Applications at the top is for custom content—you can enter a GitHub repository URL, a Docker image name, docker-compose config, and so on.

The services below look like some Docker images curated by Coolify, similar to an app store when you're playing with a NAS. They're not very complete; I feel like LinuxServer.io has a lot of stuff, and the quality is pretty good.

So far I've deployed:

• memos - a self-hosted diary/microblog app
• pair drop - WebRTC-based LAN quick file transfer
• uptime kuma - monitor server online status

Wrap-up

Oh, and while using it I also tried these two: Two new things I found while playing with Coolify

OK, that's all I'll share for now. Later I'll deploy a Next.js project onto it and write that up then.