public_html<\/code> folder. Here is what it actually is, how it maps onto the jobs cPanel used to do, and \u2014 just as importantly \u2014 where it doesn’t.<\/p>\n![\"What](\"https:\/\/ded9.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1.webp\")
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Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable Platform as a Service. The project describes itself as an alternative to Vercel, Heroku, and Netlify, which tells you a lot about its worldview: it is a deployment platform first and a server control panel second.<\/p>\n
You install Coolify on a Linux server you already control \u2014 a \u20ac5 Hetzner box, a DigitalOcean droplet, an EC2 instance, a Raspberry Pi in your cupboard \u2014 and it becomes the control layer for that server and any others you connect to it over SSH. Everything it deploys runs in Docker containers, with Traefik or Caddy sitting in front as a reverse proxy and Let’s Encrypt issuing and renewing TLS certificates automatically.<\/p>\n
The project was started by Andras Bacsai and grew, over roughly two years of public beta, into the most widely used self-hosted PaaS in the open-source world \u2014 north of 50,000 GitHub stars and hundreds of thousands of installs. Version 4 reached stable in 2026, which mattered less for features than for signaling: plenty of companies had already been running it in production for years, but the “beta” label was a blocker for anyone with a compliance checklist.<\/p>\n
The core feature set looks like this:<\/p>\n
\n- Git-based deployments.<\/strong> Connect GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Gitea. Push to a branch, a webhook fires, Coolify builds and redeploys. Preview deployments for pull requests are built in.<\/li>\n
- Multiple build strategies.<\/strong> A Dockerfile, a Docker Compose file, Nixpacks auto-detection, static site builds, or the newer Railpack option. Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Rust \u2014 if it builds in a container, it deploys.<\/li>\n
- One-click services.<\/strong> A catalog of 280+ templates covering WordPress, Ghost, Plausible, Umami, n8n, Supabase, Appwrite, Ollama, and a long tail of self-hosted tools.<\/li>\n
- Managed databases.<\/strong> PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, and ClickHouse provisioned in a click, each in its own container, with connection details injected as environment variables.<\/li>\n
- Operational plumbing.<\/strong> Scheduled backups to S3-compatible storage, environment variable management, resource limits, basic CPU\/RAM monitoring, notifications, an audit log, a REST API, and team accounts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The mental model, if you’re coming from cPanel<\/h2>\n
This is the part that trips people up. cPanel organizes the world by account<\/em> and domain<\/em>: one customer, one home directory, one set of quotas. Coolify organizes it by project<\/em>, environment<\/em>, and resource<\/em>. A project is a piece of work \u2014 a client site, an internal tool. Inside it, environments (production, staging) hold resources: an application, its database, a Redis cache, a scheduled task. Domains attach to resources rather than to accounts, and a resource can move to a different server without anything being reinstalled.<\/p>\nOnce that clicks, the rest follows. There is no home directory to browse and no public_html<\/code>. Files live in the container image or in named volumes you declare, which is why “just FTP a fix up to the server” is not part of the workflow \u2014 you change the code, you push, it redeploys.<\/p>\nSelf-hosting is free forever under an open-source license, with no feature gates or seat limits. If you’d rather not maintain the control plane, Coolify Cloud runs it for you from around $5\/month for two connected servers, with additional servers a few dollars each \u2014 but note that Cloud hosts the dashboard, not your apps. You still bring your own VPS either way.<\/p>\n
What cPanel was built for \u2014 and why people are leaving<\/h2>\n
![\"Where](\"https:\/\/ded9.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/3-1.webp\")
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