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Coolify: The End for Idle Servers
There is a post about a promo code shared by Coolify for 10€ credit on Hetzner Cloud. I thought about writing about this before, but there’s no better time than now.*
If you have an idle server, just install or manage it with Coolify. It’s an open source panel for deploying self-hosted apps using Docker, Docker Compose, or custom Docker images. It also supports GitHub integration and offers one-click installs for many great services without even the need to learn or modify Docker containers yourself.
Coolify can also manage multiple servers, just add the server IP and SSH key, and it handles the rest, including installing Docker and deploying apps. It also manages domains and SSL certificates with Traefik and provides web terminal to access any docker container or remote server.
Here are some of the apps you can install with a single click, either on the same server or remotely (this is updated regularly with more apps):
N8N
Uptime Kuma
Most popular databases
Nextcloud
Jellyfin, Plex, and the Arr stack
CMS platforms like Ghost, WordPress, and more
Installation:
https://coolify.io/self-hosted
Website:
https://coolify.io/
Screenshot:
*I'm not affiliated with the project, just a happy user of Coolify.
Comments
Should give dokploy a go as well - I find it much more convenient to use
Nice, looks similar to Coolify.
https://docs.dokploy.com/docs/core/comparison
Does it have single click applications/service?
Remember this is that software that got Hetzner to send a false abuse notice to someone that ended up getting nuked from Hosthatch
ALLEGEDLY FALSE ABUSE NOTICE
Those toy tools just make server management boring.
These tools look nice. I might be interested. It’s a hassle to manage 30 idling vps servers and a lot of dedis
Yeah, they have templates for these stuff - if they don’t support the app you are looking for, you could just use docker compose
I might be ignorant, never used it, but seems like Docker with a nice GUI and kind of limited?
I mean if you’re going to use Docker anyway, might as well learn how to handle compose files?
Also don’t know if I’d consider getting to container terminals on a web GUI a feature, it’s just ’exec -it container bash/sh’ and you’ve got it but in a real terminal application of your choosing
Take everything above with a grain of salt though, I should use it before I review it, but I don’t really like solutions that spend so much attemtion to GUI & looks, I just prefer terminal since it’s easily automated
nano docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d
Why would you want a GUI for that?
Not trying to be mean or anything, I’ve never used it so I guess it does a lot more?
No, this is basically the same thing with a GUI. It just makes it easier for some who like point and click / GUI solutions. I personally find a GUI to be irritating and why would I need a GUI to show me that my servers are idle???
I want a unified way to deploy to all my servers. Is kubernetes cluster the best way? I’m currently using ansible and GitHub actions> @emgh said:
Try setting something like WordPress or Ghost with just nano and docker compose up -d. It's doable, but Coolify makes it so much easier.
It provides prebuilt templates for a variety of apps, so you don't have to manually write complex docker-compose.yml files. And, the web ui lets you modify and manage those files. It also integrates Traefik for domain and SSL management.
That's why it is Heroku / Netlify / Vercel alternative!
i deploy everything with ansible but a lot of stuff runs in containers / pods. your choice to deal with docker, podman, kubernetes, or whatever you want to do.
Admittedly - I installed it and it is pretty neat.
Idk, don’t really do this. Why dosen’t Ansible suit you? Looked great from my highly limited playing around
I mean yeah, it’ll take a few minutes, but not more
There’s built-in git / back up / auto deploy integration, but honestly there’s nothing a plain CLI can’t do the same. It’s just for people who got used to platforms like vercel in the middle, where you now prefer looking at a neat screen and clicking over a manual fiddling through SSH.
But I guess it only backs up stuff that you used the 1-click for? So you'll likely have some stuff that it backs up and some stuff that you'll have to manually cron etc? This is partly the reason why I'm not interested in most fancy GUI stuff, when you have to do SOME stuff "outside" it you feel dirty and "split".
Or is it flexible enough to handle backing up custom stuff?
I like it. Simple and effective and a time saver.
It’s not that flexible YET - I still do voodoo magic mixery. But it’s open-source, so I guess it’s bound to improve (I might actually make a contribution if I can find a time), to make it better.
I see, thank you
Definitely useful. For a system admin who already knows to work with the CLI this can still be a real time-saver at times. Similar to this are portainer and dockge.
There is also https://awesome-docker-compose.com/apps for pre-configured docker-compose based setups for a variety of apps.
@loay there you go, wordpress and Ghost using only compose (no gui) in basically 15 seconds
https://awesome-docker-compose.com/apps/blogging-platforms/wordpress
https://awesome-docker-compose.com/apps/blogging-platforms/ghost
Yes, this does not have reverse proxy and network configuration. Also, for development purposes or small project why the hassle when Coolify and similar tools are more convenient. This single feature offered by coolify is similar to PikaPods. There are more features in coolify than just single click apps.
It dosen't because you'd likely want to run more than 1 website on the VM
Add Caddy to it, how many seconds extra would that take?
I usually like to deploy stuff myself to learn how to do it and make sure I grasp how it works. I can understand the appeal of skipping the learning part, but what happens when something breaks?
docker debug appAs a happy EasyPanel.io user, I find it very similar in terms of features to Coolify. Haven't found a compelling reason to switch yet.
Hetzners abuse detection is seriously broken. They recently sent a false abuse report to one of my providers, which claimed the server was port scanning servers on their network, while in actual fact Hetzners abuse system was detecting the responses to an ICMP-based DDoS attack originating from THEIR SERVERS which was targeting my server.