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Coolify just landed in our app library as a 1-click template, which means you can spin up a fully working self-hosted PaaS (Platform as a Service) in about the time it takes to refill your coffee. Pick a LumaDock plan, select the Coolify template at checkout and your VPS comes up with Docker, Traefik, the dashboard and Let's Encrypt automation already wired together. No installer to babysit. No setup script that fails halfway through because your kernel is the wrong flavor.
If you've been Vercel-curious about leaving but didn't want to spend a weekend stitching Nginx, certbot and Postgres backups together by hand, this is the lazy path I'd take. Plan and spec details for the new template live on the Coolify VPS hosting page.
What Coolify is
Coolify is an open-source self-hostable PaaS originally built by Andras Bacsai, sitting at over 35,000 GitHub stars as of early 2026 with 500+ contributors. Think Heroku/Vercel/Netlify-style deployment workflows, but on hardware you own. It's released under an Apache-flavored open-source license and the code is on GitHub with frequent releases and a busy community Discord. Not vaporware. Not a side project that'll be abandoned next quarter.
How Coolify works
Point Coolify at a Git repo and the platform does the rest. It builds your code into a Docker container using Nixpacks (or your own Dockerfile if you prefer), runs Traefik in front of it for routing, requests a Let's Encrypt SSL cert and gives you a live URL with HTTPS. Push a new commit and the whole thing rolls forward.
One nice property worth flagging early. Every config Coolify creates lives on your server. The Compose files, environment variables, container definitions and named volumes all sit in plain files under /data/coolify. If you uninstall Coolify tomorrow, your apps keep running as ordinary Docker containers. You lose the dashboard and the auto-deploy hooks, but nothing's locked into a proprietary format. That's a property you don't get from Vercel or Heroku.
What you can deploy
Coolify covers most things you'd want to put on a server. Apps from your own code, off-the-shelf images, full multi-container stacks and curated open-source services all work through the same UI.
Applications from Git
Connect GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea, pick a repo and Coolify uses Nixpacks to detect the language and framework. Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust and Java are all handled natively. Next.js, Nuxt, Remix, SvelteKit and Astro get framework-aware builds. Push to your branch, Coolify auto-deploys.
You don't need to write a Dockerfile or know Docker internals to ship your first app. The auto-detection handles most of the lockfile and build-command guessing for you.
Docker images and Compose files
Got a pre-built image on Docker Hub or a private registry? Paste image and tag, set ports and env vars, deploy. Got a multi-container stack with a docker-compose.yml? Drop the YAML straight in. Coolify reads the compose file, creates the containers, sets up networking and manages the lifecycle from one UI.
One-click services
This is the part that surprises new users. Coolify ships with around 294 pre-configured templates for popular open-source apps. WordPress, Ghost, Plausible, Umami, n8n, Uptime Kuma, Vaultwarden, Mattermost, Gitea, Forgejo, Supabase, MinIO, Flowise, NocoDB, Outline, Penpot, Pocketbase, Nextcloud and Jellyfin all live in the catalog. The full list is in the Coolify services overview.
For most popular self-hosted software, the flow is: click the template, fill in admin credentials, hit deploy and you've got a running install in minutes.
Databases
Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, MariaDB and Redis are the big five. Less common picks like ClickHouse, KeyDB and DragonFly are in there too. Each one comes with S3-compatible automated backups built in. You point it at a bucket once and mostly forget about it.
Server requirements
Worth being concrete here, since this trips up first-timers. Coolify itself eats roughly 750MB to 1.2GB of RAM before you deploy anything. That's the dashboard, the internal Postgres, the Redis cache and the Traefik proxy combined. Builds are also memory-hungry. Compiling a Next.js app under Nixpacks can briefly spike RAM hard.
For practical sizing:
- One or two small hobby apps: 4GB RAM, 2 vCPU. Tight but workable.
- Several apps plus a database or two: 8GB RAM, 4 vCPU. Comfortable.
- Production stack with builds on the same box: 16GB+ RAM, faster cores. Builds are where Coolify gets greedy.
- Heavy production: split builds onto a second VPS. Coolify supports a dedicated build server natively, which keeps production traffic untouched while builds run elsewhere.
Our LumaDock VPS lineup covers all four sizes. The standard EPYC tiers handle most general use. If your builds are CPU-bound (think large Next.js or TypeScript projects), the Ryzen VDS tier with dedicated 4.5 GHz cores is noticeably faster on single-thread compile work. The High-End EPYC Genoa plans are the right pick for memory-heavy stacks with multiple databases and services running together.
Multi-server, backups and notifications
Single-server Coolify is what most people start with. Once you outgrow it, the platform supports multi-server setups out of the box. Add a second VPS over SSH, point Coolify at it and use it as a deployment target, build server or both. Docker Swarm clusters are supported, with Kubernetes on the public roadmap.
A few day-2 things worth knowing about now rather than discovering at 3am:
- Backups: configure S3-compatible storage once. Database backups run on a schedule. Restoring is a click.
- Resource limits: by default, Docker containers have no memory or CPU limits. One misbehaving container can starve everything else on the box. Coolify lets you set per-service limits in the dashboard.
- Notifications: Discord, Slack, Telegram and email are all supported. Wire at least one up so you know when a deploy fails.
- API and webhooks: Coolify exposes a full HTTP API and a webhook system for triggering deploys from CI/CD or external tooling.
- Pull request previews: the GitHub App integration spins up a unique URL for every pull request, so reviewers see the running version of the change before it's merged.
- Updates: the dashboard has a built-in updater. One click in settings rolls Coolify forward. Read the release notes and snapshot your VPS before big version jumps.
Coolify on LumaDock
The 1-click template starts you on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with the full Coolify stack pre-installed:
- Docker Engine 24+ and the Compose plugin
- Coolify itself, running as a container alongside its internal Postgres and Redis
- Traefik as the reverse proxy, handling routing between containers based on Host headers
- Let's Encrypt automation for SSL certificates and renewals
- UFW with sensible defaults out of the box
The dashboard becomes available at http://YOUR_IP:8000 within 1-2 minutes of first boot. Hardware underneath is AMD EPYC with NVMe SSD storage, KVM virtualization, full root access and 1 Gbps network. Pick whichever European or US datacenter is closest to your users. Cancel anytime.
Installation steps
- Pick a plan on LumaDock VPS that matches your sizing.
- At checkout, select the Coolify template under operating systems and apps.
- Wait about 1-2 minutes for the server to boot and Coolify to come up.
- Hit
http://YOUR_IP:8000, create your admin account immediately, then lock down port 8000 in the firewall to your own IP. - Add a custom domain so the dashboard runs over HTTPS instead of bare IP.
Important footgun. The first user to register at port 8000 becomes the full admin. So the moment your server's up, hit the IP and create your account before any random scanner on the internet does it for you. If you forget this and find someone else has registered first, the only fix is reinstalling.
Full step-by-step is in our Coolify getting started guide in the knowledgebase, including how to add your first app, set up SSL on a custom domain, configure backups and recover from common issues.
One thing worth flagging. Don't run anything else on the same VPS outside of Coolify. The platform expects to be the only thing managing Docker on the server. Stuff outside it tends to create port conflicts and weird Traefik routing. Need a separate isolated service? Run it on a second VPS and link the two via private networking.
When to use Coolify
Coolify isn't a free lunch. You're swapping a managed-PaaS bill for the responsibility of patching your own kernel, watching disk usage, remembering backups and dealing with whatever weird thing happened at 3am that you'd rather not. The tooling makes most of it easy, but it's still on you. If your team has zero Linux comfort, a managed PaaS might genuinely be worth the premium.
On the other hand, if you're already running VPS instances and you've been duct-taping Docker Compose by hand, Coolify is going to feel like cheating. Same for indie developers shipping multiple side projects, agencies juggling client containerized apps, AI builders self-hosting LLM tooling and anyone tired of surprise PaaS bills.
Worth flagging for the WordPress crowd too. If you're hosting traditional sites for clients with email, mailboxes, FTP and the rest of it, our ispmanager VPS is a cleaner fit. Coolify is built for containerized apps, not the classic shared-hosting pattern. Different tools for different jobs.
And if all you want is n8n with a sane production setup (Postgres backend, Caddy proxy, Docker pre-configured), our n8n VPS hosting template is purpose-built for that. No need to layer Coolify on top.
