Coolify Made Deployment Simple

Deployment used to be the boring, annoying part of my workflow. Not because it was hard, but because it was scattered. Every project lived somewhere else, with its own rules and limits.

I spent more time managing platforms than actually building things.

Coolify was the first tool that removed that friction instead of adding more.

So what is Coolify exactly?

It's an open source tool that lets you deploy apps, websites, and databases on your own server. Think Heroku, but you own everything. No monthly surprises. No vendor lock in. Your server, your data, your rules.

It works with Docker under the hood, but you don't need to know Docker to use it. You just connect your Git repo, click deploy, and it handles the rest.

What you need before you start

Not much, honestly.

That's it. If you already have a VPS running, you're halfway there.

Let's install it

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

Congratulations, Your Coolify instance is ready to use.

Please visit http://your-server-ip:8000 to get started.

ROOT_USERNAME=yourusername ROOT_USER_EMAIL=you@email.com ROOT_USER_PASSWORD=yourpassword bash -c 'curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash'

Now set up your domain

Right now Coolify is running on HTTP with just your server IP. That works for testing, but it's not secure. Let's fix that.

Once you save that, Coolify handles SSL by itself. No Let's Encrypt setup. No nginx config. It just works.

Lock it down with a firewall

Now that your domain is set up, you should close off the ports you don't need. You only need three ports open.

If you're on Ubuntu, you can set this up with UFW:

sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

After you turn on the firewall, port 8000 will be blocked. That's fine. You'll only access Coolify through your domain from now on.

Deploy your first app

This is where it gets fun. Go back into your Coolify dashboard and hit the button to create a new app.

You can also deploy databases straight from the dashboard. PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB. All with one click. No setup scripts. No config files.

What I actually run on Coolify now

Since I switched, everything lives in one place:

Yeah. That last row is the one that matters.

When things go wrong: Quick diagnostics

Coolify runs on Docker, so when something breaks, you need to check the containers. Most issues come down to three things: containers crashing, disk space running out, or network problems.

Here's how to figure out what's broken.

Check if containers are running

SSH into your server as root (sudo -i) and run this:

docker ps -a --filter "name=coolify"

You should see coolify, coolify-db, coolify-redis, and coolify-realtime all listed as "Up". If any of them say "Restarting" or "Exited", that's your problem.

Check the logs

If a container is down, check what it's complaining about:

docker logs --tail 100 coolify

This shows the last 100 lines. Usually the error is right at the bottom.

Check disk space

This is the most common issue. Run this:

df -h /

Coolify needs at least 30GB total space and 20GB free. If you're running low, the database will crash and nothing will work.

docker image prune -af
docker container prune -f --filter "label=coolify.managed=true"
docker builder prune -af

Check if port 8000 is listening

If the dashboard won't load, make sure the port is actually open:

ss -tulpn | grep :8000

If this returns nothing, the web interface isn't bound to the port. Restart Coolify with the commands below.

Common problems and fixes

Restart everything

If you've tried the above and nothing works, restart all Coolify services:

cd /data/coolify/source
docker compose --env-file .env -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml down
docker compose --env-file .env -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Wait about a minute for everything to start up again.

Custom domain issues

If your custom domain isn't working, check the proxy logs:

docker logs coolify-proxy --tail 50

This will show you SSL certificate errors or reverse proxy problems.

Is there anything I don't like?

Honestly? The docs could be better. Sometimes I had to dig around to find what I needed. And if something breaks, the error messages aren't always helpful.

But the discord community is solid. The GitHub repo is active. And once everything is running, it just sits there and works. I haven't had to touch it in weeks.