Coolify
🐋
DIY PaaS means watching the cluster yourself.
Consider fortrabbit an alternative to Coolify for hosting PHP applications and websites.
About Coolify
Coolify is an open-source server management service. It runs as a control panel on top of the VPS providers you choose — DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, Vultr, Azure and friends. You provision the instance, Coolify automates container orchestration, deployments, and SSL.
It's a good fit if you want full ownership of the box and you're fine handling OS patches, backups, and incident response yourself. It offers a self-hosted edition that you maintain plus a hosted cloud version with paid support. Both target modern PHP, Node.js, and static front-end workloads.
What Coolify does well
- Git-based and Docker-based deployments for self-managed servers
- Workspace UI for managing multiple projects and environments
- Bring-your-own infrastructure model with community-driven templates
Why fortrabbit
Responsibility: We aim for less yak‑shaving. fortrabbit abstracts plumbing and gives you a single point of contact for billing and technical questions. See our legal section for the boring but important bits.
App hosting: Our platform is service‑oriented. You launch and scale apps, not servers. Read about our app hosting architecture.
Pricing: With Coolify you pay twice — for the VPS and the panel (or your time). With fortrabbit, you pay for the app. Entry plans fit small sites; scaling stays predictable.
Human support: Talk to us in chat, not a bot. See our support features.
When to choose what
| Scenario | Coolify | fortrabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Full server ownership | ✅ Full control, Docker friendly | ⚠️ Opinionated |
| Responsibility OS level | ⚠️ You patch, back up, monitor | ✅ Managed |
| Support | ⚠️ Community first, limited paid support | ✅ Human support |
Migration considerations
Already have projects on Coolify? You can point your Git remotes at fortrabbit and deploy without managing