Dev Tools

If you've been living under a rock, Coolify is the open-source PaaS that pretends to be Vercel and Heroku at the same time. I run a handful of side projects on it from a single Hetzner box and the bill is a flat €15/month, no per-build invoice.

The Setup

One command, one VPS, one webhook. Coolify installs in a Docker stack, talks to your GitHub repo, and gives you a dashboard that pushes the right buttons. Buildpacks for Node, static, Dockerfile, Nixpacks — all there.

# coolify.yaml fragment for an Astro 5 + Netlify-style site
project: aidxn-portfolio
build:
  pack: nixpacks
  command: npm run build
  output: dist
runtime:
  type: static
  port: 80
env:
  PUBLIC_SITE_URL: https://aidxn.dev
domains:
  - aidxn.dev
  - www.aidxn.dev

The Money Pattern

The unlock is treating Coolify like Netlify for stuff you don't want to put on Netlify. Internal dashboards, Supabase-backed admin tools, scratch experiments — anything where you'd rather not pay per-seat or per-build. Connect GitHub, push, done.

# docker-compose.yml service for a quick Coolify install
services:
  coolify:
    image: coollabsio/coolify:latest
    container_name: coolify
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
      - "6001:6001"
      - "6002:6002"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - coolify-db:/app/data
volumes:
  coolify-db:

The Catch

It's a small team shipping fast, which means breaking changes happen. Pin your version, snapshot your VPS, and don't update on a Friday. The dashboard occasionally desyncs from the underlying Docker state — restarting the Coolify container fixes it 95% of the time.

The Verdict

For revenue-generating sites I still reach for Netlify. For the long tail of Aidxn Design experiments and Rebuild Relief internal tools, Coolify is the right tool. Behold: a deploy platform that scales with your wallet, not against it.