Guide: Self-hosted deployment

Deploy apps on your VPS — without Vercel or cloud lock-in

Use Coolify as a self-hosted alternative to Vercel, Netlify, or Lovable. Full control over your stack, data stored in Sweden, and no surprise bills. Deploy any framework in minutes.

What is Coolify?

Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable platform that gives you the same developer experience as Vercel or Netlify — push to deploy, automatic SSL, preview deployments — but running on your own server.

Platforms like Vercel, Netlify, Railway, and Lovable are great for getting started quickly. But as your project grows, you hit limits: escalating costs on bandwidth and compute, vendor lock-in to proprietary runtimes, and data stored on US servers — which complicates GDPR compliance.

With Coolify on an Adminor VPS, your apps run in Swedish datacenters with fixed monthly pricing. You get unlimited deployments, full root access, and complete ownership of your infrastructure.

Whether you are building a SaaS product, an internal tool, or a client project, this guide walks you through the entire setup in about 15 minutes.

🇪🇺

GDPR-compliant by default

Your data stays in Swedish datacenters. No third-party cloud provider involved in the request path.

💰

Predictable pricing

Fixed monthly cost. No per-request billing, no bandwidth surcharges, no function invocation fees.

🔒

No vendor lock-in

Standard Docker containers under the hood. Migrate anywhere, any time — your code is never tied to a proprietary runtime.

Full control

Root access, custom runtimes, private networking, cron jobs, and any database you need — all on your terms.

Deploy in 5 steps

From a fresh VPS to a running production app with automatic SSL — in about 15 minutes.

1

Order a VPS

Pick a plan that matches your workload. For most projects running Coolify, we recommend VPS Medium (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe) at 399 SEK/month. It comfortably handles multiple apps, databases, and background workers.

For smaller projects or staging environments, VPS Micro (99 SEK/mo) works fine as a starting point.

View all VPS plans →
Tip: Choose Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 LTS as your OS. Coolify handles everything else.
2

Install Coolify

SSH into your new server and run the official installer. It sets up Docker, Traefik (reverse proxy), and the Coolify dashboard automatically.

Terminal $ ssh root@your-server-ip # Run the Coolify installer $ curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

The installation takes 2–3 minutes. When it finishes, open http://your-server-ip:8000 in your browser to access the dashboard and create your admin account.

Tip: After setup, configure Coolify to use port 443 with a domain (e.g., coolify.yourdomain.com) for secure access.
3

Connect your Git repository

In the Coolify dashboard, go to Sources and link your GitHub or GitLab account. Coolify creates a webhook on your repository so every push triggers a new build.

You can also connect private repositories. Coolify supports deploy keys and GitHub App integrations for fine-grained access control.

What happens # 1. You push code to your repo git push origin main # 2. GitHub/GitLab sends a webhook to Coolify # 3. Coolify pulls the code, builds it, and deploys # 4. Zero-downtime deployment completes in ~30s
4

Deploy your first app

Click New Resource → Application, select your repository and branch, and hit deploy. Coolify auto-detects the framework (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Laravel, Django, etc.) and configures the build pipeline accordingly.

For custom setups, you can provide a Dockerfile or docker-compose.yml in your repository root. Need environment variables? Set them in the dashboard — they are encrypted at rest.

Tip: Enable preview deployments to automatically deploy every pull request to a unique URL for testing.
5

Custom domain & SSL

Point your domain's A record to your VPS IP address. In Coolify, add the domain to your application settings. Let's Encrypt SSL certificates are issued and renewed automatically — no configuration needed.

DNS # Point your domain to the VPS A yourdomain.com → 185.x.x.x CNAME www.yourdomain.com → yourdomain.com # For wildcard subdomains (optional) A *.yourdomain.com → 185.x.x.x

Wildcard DNS lets you deploy multiple apps on subdomains (e.g., app.yourdomain.com, api.yourdomain.com, staging.yourdomain.com) without touching DNS for each one.

What can you deploy?

Coolify supports virtually anything that runs in a container. Here are the most common workloads.

Next.js & React

SSR, SSG, and ISR out of the box. Full Next.js feature support including App Router, Server Actions, and middleware.

Node.js APIs

Express, Fastify, Hono, NestJS — any Node.js server. Automatic health checks and zero-downtime deployments.

🐍

Python / Django / Flask

Django, Flask, FastAPI with Gunicorn or Uvicorn. Celery workers and scheduled tasks supported via Docker Compose.

🎓

WordPress & PHP

One-click WordPress deployment with persistent storage. Also supports Laravel, Symfony, and any PHP application.

🗃

Databases

PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and Redis as managed services with automatic backups and connection pooling.

📦

Docker Compose

Deploy complex multi-container setups directly from a docker-compose.yml. Ideal for microservice architectures.

How does it compare?

Self-hosted on Adminor VPS vs. popular cloud platforms.

Coolify + Adminor VPS Vercel Railway Heroku
Price / month From 99 SEK (fixed) $0 – $20+ (usage-based) $5+ (usage-based) $5 – $25+ per dyno
Swedish servers ✓ Yes US/EU regions US only US/EU regions
GDPR-friendly ✓ Full control DPA available Limited DPA available
Number of apps Unlimited Per-project pricing Per-service pricing Per-dyno pricing
Database included ✓ Any (PG, MySQL, Redis...) Postgres (paid add-on) Postgres, Redis (metered) Postgres (paid add-on)
SSL certificates ✓ Auto (Let's Encrypt) Auto Auto Auto
Custom domain ✓ Unlimited
Root / SSH access ✓ Full root
Vendor lock-in None Moderate Low Moderate

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about self-hosted deployments with Coolify.

No. After the initial one-command installation, everything is managed through Coolify's web UI. You deploy apps, manage domains, set environment variables, and view logs all from your browser. If you can use Vercel's dashboard, you can use Coolify. That said, having basic terminal knowledge is helpful for troubleshooting, and our support team is available 24/7 if you get stuck.
Adminor VPS plans start at 99 SEK/month for VPS Micro (1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM). For running Coolify with production workloads, we recommend VPS Medium at 399 SEK/month (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe). Coolify itself is completely free and open source. There are no per-deployment, per-request, or bandwidth fees — the monthly VPS cost is all you pay.
Yes. Since Vercel deploys from a Git repository, you simply connect that same repository to Coolify. Most frameworks — Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Remix — work out of the box. The main things to update are environment variables (copy them to Coolify's dashboard) and any Vercel-specific features like Edge Functions or Vercel KV, which have self-hosted equivalents (e.g., standard serverless functions and Redis).
Your VPS includes filesystem-level snapshots. For application data, we recommend setting up automatic database backups in Coolify, which supports scheduled dumps for PostgreSQL and MySQL. Backups can be stored locally or sent to S3-compatible storage (e.g., Backblaze B2, MinIO, or Wasabi). For critical workloads, we can also configure off-site backup replication.
Our VPS infrastructure comes with a 99.9% uptime SLA. Servers run on enterprise-grade hardware with redundant NVMe storage and ECC memory. We monitor all nodes 24/7, and our support team is reachable around the clock. In the unlikely event of a hardware failure, VMs are automatically migrated to healthy nodes. For mission-critical applications, we offer high-availability setups with load balancing across multiple VPS instances.

Get started today

Order a VPS, install Coolify, and deploy your first app — all in under 15 minutes. No credit card lock-in, no surprises.