Coolify VPS

Who it suits

Developers who want a Heroku- or Vercel-style workflow on a server they control: push to Git, get a deployment with HTTPS. Coolify wants the server to itself, so choose it for a fresh server rather than one that already runs nginx or other Docker projects.

Which plan

Standard (2 vCPU, 4 GB) is the smallest plan we offer it on. Coolify's documentation asks for 2 cores and 2 GB for Coolify alone, so the rest is for your apps. Choose Extreme (8 GB) if you'll build several apps' images on the server: builds are the memory peaks.

What we install

Coolify is an open-source, self-hosted platform for deploying apps, databases and services from Git, with automatic HTTPS. Its official installer runs on first boot and sets up Docker and Coolify's containers; you finish setup in its web dashboard.

From order to ready

1. Server ready. We email you when the server is running, and you can log in with SSH. The installer starts on that same first boot.
2. Installer running. It logs to /var/log/vps9-setup.log; tail -f it to watch.
3. Application ready. This can be minutes after SSH works. The installer writes its exit code to /var/lib/vps9-setup.exit; a value of 0 means installation succeeded. Coolify is ready when its containers are up (docker ps lists the coolify ones) and curl -sI http://127.0.0.1:8000 answers on the server. Allow about five minutes after the server is ready for the installer to pull everything.

What you still do

1. Wait for the installer to finish, about five minutes after the server is ready: /var/lib/vps9-setup.exit appears.
2. From your computer, run ssh -L 8000:127.0.0.1:8000 -L 6001:127.0.0.1:6001 -L 6002:127.0.0.1:6002 root@<your IPv4>, open http://localhost:8000 and create the admin account, then turn on two-factor login. Ports 8000, 6001 and 6002 are blocked from outside the server, so the tunnel is the way in.
3. Coolify only lets you create that first account in the 10 minutes after it starts. If the page says "Setup window closed", run docker restart coolify on the server, wait about a minute, and reload.
4. Point a domain at the server, allow 80 and 443 in the panel firewall if you filter, and set the domain as the instance domain in Coolify's Settings. Traefik gets a certificate and the dashboard moves to HTTPS on 443.
5. Optional: to reach 8000 directly again, run vps9-coolify-open on the server. It removes the block for good, and the panel firewall decides from then on.

Exposure and security

Coolify's installer publishes its dashboard on port 8000, plus 6001 and 6002 for live updates and the web terminal, and until you create the admin account whoever opens the dashboard first becomes the admin, with root on your server. So before the installer runs, we block those three ports from outside the server, over IPv4 and IPv6, with firewall rules on the server that come back at every boot; the server itself, and so an SSH tunnel, still reaches them. We tested it on a live Rack4 server on 30 October 2026: blocked from outside, through a reboot and a Docker restart, with your domain still served on 443. That test was over IPv4 only, as our servers don't have IPv6 addresses yet. Ports 80 and 443 stay open: they belong to Coolify's proxy, Traefik, which serves the dashboard once you give it a domain. vps9-coolify-open removes the block if you want 8000 reachable again.

Backups and upgrades

Coolify updates itself by default (you can turn that off in its settings); the operating system is yours to patch. Coolify can back up its databases to S3-compatible storage on a schedule. Files your apps keep in Docker volumes need their own off-server copies. We run the hardware, the network and the first-boot install; after that, Coolify is yours to run, and we don't manage or update it for you. Off-site backups of the whole disk are an optional paid add-on; they copy the disk as it is at one moment, so keep the app's own backups as well.