Coolify
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 19 deployment tools by recommenders
Gives a Vercel-like one-click deploy experience on your own cheap VPS, such as Hetzner, for free. Common caveat: the UI can feel clunky and configuration overwhelming.
Gives a Vercel-like one-click deploy experience on your own cheap VPS, such as Hetzner, for free. Common caveat: the UI can feel clunky and configuration overwhelming.
46 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 38
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 38 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap self-hosting on your own VPS
“My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “Buy a cheap VPS and use something like Coolify, Dokploy, or Dokku if you don't need a UI”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?” “Coolify + Hetzner is a solid combo once you start consolidating services.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: I've started using Coolify, any recommendations?” - Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: mdto.page – Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly”
One-click deploys for apps and databases
“You can deploy databases, auth providers, Git forges, a static site, anything you want with one click in a nice web UI.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “CSS-Tricks in Limbo” “Coolify on a Hetzner server is giving me the one click service experience”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner: From $1,432 to $233 With Zero Downtime” “Coolify (Hungary) to get a Vercel-like PaaS experience for free”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “The bootstrapper's EU stack for under €10 per month” - Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Netbird a German Tailscale alternative (P2P WireGuard-based overlay network)”
Polished, pleasant user experience
“now, at least, a vastly superior website user experience”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “Coolify has been refreshingly nice to use for me too”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: I've started using Coolify, any recommendations?” “Pretty fun, while low maintenance and great UX.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you use to host side projects?” - Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Railway Global Outage”
Easy, fun and rewarding to use
“i am currently using coolify, and I love it”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: What are the best Open Source alternatives to popular SaaS?” “It was pretty easy and really rewarding!”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Fine, I'll Do It Myself” “As a happy user of coolify”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Clunky, unpolished UI and UX
“Coolify is full of features, but the UX suffers and they had a nasty breaking bug at one point”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud” “I've recently tried Coolify but it didn't feel very polished and mostly clunky”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s” “marketplace search filters straight up do nothing”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “NixOS is making me less afraid” Reliability problems and breaking bugs
“Coolify is full of features, but the UX suffers and they had a nasty breaking bug at one point”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud” “Coolify is not known to be very reliable, especially because it's built on PHP”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “so far it has not been exactly reliable”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” Overwhelming configuration and setup
“Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?” “Coolify since v4 it has 4 containers running to get started.”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Mushak – Zero config zero downtime Docker/Compose to server deployment” “I used Coolify and it was so hard”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Nvidia NemoClaw”
Other deployment tools people recommend
The four most recommended other deployment tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 19 deployment tools, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 52 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'm lucky I moved away from it to host my own db with coolify”
“marketplace search filters straight up do nothing”
“You can deploy databases, auth providers, Git forges, a static site, anything you want with one click in a nice web UI.”
“Hetzner + Coolify + BunnyCDN for the entire stack”
“Their ecosystem help start a service with pretty much zero issues.”
“I want each application to be a separate login, so I can have one pointed to a different subdomain or domain”
“Pretty fun, while low maintenance and great UX.”
“open source PaaS software on-par with what VC companies offer (dokploy, coolify, or komodo)”
“Coolify (Hungary) to get a Vercel-like PaaS experience for free”
“There’s absolutely no reason to use railway when you can use coolify.”
“Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.”
“Coolify is full of features, but the UX suffers and they had a nasty breaking bug at one point”
“it works well, all under my control and only expose what I want”
“Coolify on a Hetzner server is giving me the one click service experience”
“I did hit a few Coolify and Docker related hickups along the way”
“I used Coolify and it was so hard”
“Coolify is usually loved by the community.”
“Coolify + Hetzner is a solid combo once you start consolidating services.”
“Coolify has been refreshingly nice to use for me too”
“the UI/UX has been polished very well”
“run open-source PaaS like Coolify, Dokploy, Caprover, etc.”
“Coolify is not known to be very reliable, especially because it's built on PHP”
“so far it has not been exactly reliable”
“the only thing that made me happy at the end”
“now, at least, a vastly superior website user experience”
“My personal favorite. It's slightly more involved, but you can run it on any hardware like hetzner and save a boatload.”
“self-host a Coolify server (a "vercel-lite" control panel)”
“It handles SSL, GitHub-triggered Red/Blue deployments, and Docker management.”
“With Coolify and Cloudflare Tunnels you can self host your personal projects even behind CG-NAT.”
“A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better.”
“It was pretty easy and really rewarding!”
“Buy a cheap VPS and use something like Coolify, Dokploy, or Dokku if you don't need a UI”
“Coolify since v4 it has 4 containers running to get started.”
“coolify/dokploy comes to mind and it exactly do that way”
“many have used Coolify with great success”
“host the backend API on the Coolify server”
“I've recently tried Coolify but it didn't feel very polished and mostly clunky”
“Even coolify lets you add as many machines as you want”
“As a happy user of coolify”
“i am currently using coolify, and I love it”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.