Free to self-host
Why self-host Dokploy instead of paying a platform
Dokploy is a deployment platform you run yourself, built as an open source answer to Vercel, Netlify and Heroku. Connect a repository and it builds, deploys and keeps the certificate current through Traefik. Databases sit beside the applications, with PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, MariaDB and Redis managed from the same dashboard and backed up to external storage on a schedule.
Docker Swarm does the orchestration, which is what separates it from the simpler deployment tools. A single server behaves as a one-node cluster, so replica counts and rolling updates work from the first deploy. Adding a second machine later is a join rather than a migration. Commercial platforms bill by build minutes, bandwidth and seats. Here the cost is the server, so a heavy release week changes nothing on the invoice.