Coolify
DevOps & HostingA platform for deploying applications, databases and services on your own servers over SSH.
What the free edition leaves out
The free edition covers the features teams usually need; we found nothing important held back. “Not confirmed” means the official pages we read did not say, so we do not guess.
| Feature | Free edition | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO / SAML | Not confirmed | The docs navigation lists Authentication but no SSO or SAML details were read. | Source ↗ |
| Role-based access control | Free | The docs list Roles and Permissions under Team Management, and the comparison page says all current features are free when self-hosted. | Source ↗ |
| Audit logs | Free | The docs list an Audit Log under Team Management, and the comparison page says all current features are free when self-hosted. | Source ↗ |
| Multi-user / teams | Free | The comparison page says teams and team members are unlimited in both self-hosted and Cloud. | Source ↗ |
| Backups and restore | Free | The README lists database and storage backups; self-hosters configure, store and test their own instance backups. | Source ↗ |
| API access | Free | The README lists management through the dashboard, API, CLI and MCP. | Source ↗ |
| Support SLA | Not confirmed | The README says Cloud comes with additional support; no SLA or support terms are described for either model. | Source ↗ |
Best for
Developers and small teams who want a Heroku or Vercel style deployment dashboard on VPS or bare-metal servers they control.
Why choose it over Heroku
The README and the comparison page say all features are free when self-hosted, with no license fee and no paywalled features. It deploys from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Gitea, supports Dockerfile, Docker Compose and prebuilt images, offers more than 300 one-click services, and your running resources keep working if you stop using Coolify.
Where it falls short
With self-hosting you install, monitor, update and back up the control plane yourself, and configure email delivery yourself. Coolify Cloud is the paid managed alternative, and each Cloud team needs its own subscription. Coolify only runs on Linux and needs at least 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of RAM; smaller machines are not recommended.
Open-source alternative to
- Heroku — Coolify can replace Heroku for git-push style deployments, databases and one-click services running on servers you own.
- Vercel — It can replace Vercel for deploying web apps with pull-request previews and automatic HTTPS on your own hardware.
- Netlify — The README names Netlify among the platforms Coolify is a self-hostable alternative to.
Category
DevOps & HostingTopics
Tech stack
PHP
DockerLanguages as reported by GitHub for the repository.
