Coolify Your Deployments: A Budget-Friendly Approach for Developers

When it comes to deploying your side project without breaking the bank, there are plenty of options available. Popular choices like Vercel and Netlify are widely used, but they come with their own limitations. One of the biggest issues is that it’s easy to exceed their free tier limits, which can lead to unexpected charges. I’ve seen stories of people racking up bills in the thousands because of this. Plus, these platforms don’t offer free databases, which makes it challenging to build sites with dynamic content. And while you used to be able to rely on services like Planetscale for free database hosting, they’ve recently removed their free tier. That’s where Coolify comes in.

Coolify is an open-source platform that allows you to self-host multiple services on a single server. It’s as easy to use as Vercel and Netlify, but with the added benefit of being free. All you need is a VPS (Virtual Private Server) that costs around $12 per month. Since you’re using your own server, you’ll need to handle things like SSH keys and firewall rules, but don’t worry—I’ll walk you through that. I won’t cover every feature of Coolify here, so if you’re interested, be sure to check out their documentation.

System Design Overview

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of setting everything up, let’s go over the system design. Understanding the components and how they fit together will make the setup process much smoother.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

The VPS is the backbone of our setup, hosting all the services we’ll be deploying. You can choose a VPS from any provider—I’m using DigitalOcean because of their reasonable pricing. One thing to note: the IP address of your VPS can change if it’s restarted, unless you reserve it, which some providers charge for.

Docker Engine

Coolify operates on top of Docker. Essentially, Coolify manages the deployment of all your services, which will run inside their own Docker containers.

Coolify and Services

Coolify comes with a user-friendly web interface that makes it easy to manage all your services. By default, this interface is accessible via a public port, so it’s important to secure it with your cloud provider’s firewall to prevent unauthorized access. While the admin panel is protected by a username and password, it’s always better to have multiple layers of security. The services and databases you deploy via Coolify will also be hosted on this VPS.

Traefik

Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy that Coolify uses to make your services accessible to the public. It automatically generates SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt, ensuring that your site supports HTTPS by default. Traefik routes traffic based on the requested URL—for instance, service1.example.com would point to one service, while service2.example.com would point to another.

Tailscale

Tailscale is a tool that allows you to securely connect to your server via SSH or other protocols without exposing any ports to the public internet. It requires that the client is part of your Tailscale network to connect, adding an extra layer of security.

Firewall

The firewall could be managed either by your cloud provider or directly on the VPS. In this setup, we’ll use the cloud provider’s firewall, configured to allow only HTTP and HTTPS connections from Cloudflare. All other ports and protocols should be blocked. Cloudflare provides a list of their IP ranges here. If you prefer not to expose any ports to the internet, you can use Cloudflare tunnels.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare acts as both a DNS name server and a DDoS protection provider, safeguarding your service from malicious attacks. It also allows you to set additional firewall rules, like blocking traffic from specific regions or Tor networks.

Installation and Setup

Now that you have a clear understanding of the system design, let’s move on to the installation and setup process.

Installing Coolify

After setting up your VPS, the first step is to SSH into the server. Once you’re connected, install Coolify with the following command:

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

If this command is outdated, refer to the latest instructions here. Once the installation is complete, you can access the Coolify dashboard by navigating to http://your-server-ip:5000 in your browser. Follow the prompts to create an account and log in.

Setting Up Tailscale

To set up Tailscale, follow this video tutorial, which will guide you through the process of installing the Tailscale client on your phone, laptop, and server. You don’t need to set it up as an exit node unless you want the ability to proxy your traffic through the server.

Configuring Cloudflare

If you don’t already have a domain, you’ll need to create one or add a subdomain in Cloudflare. For this example, I’m using demo.alexstanfield.com.

Deploying Your First Service

With everything set up, it’s time to deploy your first service. For this demo, we’ll use a simple demo website hosted on Docker: yeasy/simple-web.

1. Go to the “Projects” tab in the Coolify dashboard and add a new project.
2. Name your project and click “Continue.” Double-click on the production environment, then add a new resource.
3. You have several options for deploying your application, but for this demo, we’ll use an existing Docker image.
4. Enter the Docker image name: yeasy/simple-web:latest and save the configuration.
5. Now you’ll configure your service:
   • In the “Domain” textbox, replace the default domain with your own (e.g., https://demo.alexstanfield.com). Since we’ve configured the firewall to only accept connections from Cloudflare, the default domain won’t work.
   • Specify the Docker image tag if you have a specific one in mind.
   • Under “Network,” make sure you specify the port your service will use to handle HTTP traffic inside the container. Traefik will automatically route traffic to this port. You can also expose a port on localhost for debugging if needed.
   • Review the other tabs if you’re curious, then click “Deploy.”
6. Once your service is up and running, you’ll see it in the dashboard. You might notice a warning symbol—setting up health checks will make that go away and help ensure your site stays up.
7. Finally, visit your website at https://demo.alexstanfield.com.

Conclusion

Deploying your side project with Coolify is straightforward, secure, and budget-friendly. If your server starts struggling because your project becomes popular, you can easily scale up and consider enabling caching via Cloudflare’s CDN. As Pieter Levels, the creator of Nomad List, once tweeted:

“With a bit of caching magic in front of your server, you can make it handle 1000x more traffic. It’ll go way further than you think.”
— @levelsio