I'm not a Coolify user and generally would not recommend it. Wrote a post here explaining why: ben-makes-stuff.beehiiv.com/p…
On the other hand, Dokku and Kamal work with the command line, meaning it's easy to write a simple bash script (and/or GitHub Actions script) to set everything up.
Overall: I think your pricing is reasonable but instead of paying $9 I'd rather have fun writing that bash script. I'm sure some people would be interested in something like this though.
Decent writeup on your issues with Coolify, but I disagree with saying needing two VPS nodes (one for Coolify) is a bad thing.
Coolify is supposed to be a self-hosted provisioning service alternative to the likes of Laravel Forge, for managing the setup of multiple apps. So the usage model in that sense is "correct".
Not familiar with Forge. But, regardless of what model is trying to be emulated, if solution 1 doesn't require an extra node for setup and solution 2 does, I'm going with solution 1 every time.
I'm not getting the point about multiple apps (again, maybe because I'm not familiar with anything related to Laravel) - you can configure multiple apps with Kamal, Dokku, K3s, etc without needing an extra node.
Ultimately: low cost, low complexity, and ease of automation is what I always optimize for and I think that's what most people should optimize for too.
Sure, I'm not saying you're wrong in your decision making. It's more that I'm trying to explain how/what Coolify is actually competing with as a solution rather than being a provisioning solution specific to what you might need.
I believe this is happening because Coolify has chosen to cater to those who "require" redundancy. It's a respectable choice, but in my opinion single (maybe beefy) node is what most indie hackers need (and should stick to)
100% agree. Most people do not need this extra crap, just deploy one VPS and put your apps on it. That was the point I was trying to make in my blog post as well.
Have not tried k0s - there are a few of these "kubernetes but simpler" tools that all attempt to prepackage k8s into an installer and make it more efficient. k0s appears to be a bit more customizable, but by default probably has the same issues I pointed out with k3s.
I think k3s/k0s are good tools if you need horizontal scaling - but seeing as:
1) Most people do not need horizontal scaling, at least not in the beginning
2) Dokku supports k3s as a scheduler: dokku.com/docs/deployment/sch…
=> You can just start off with Dokku + local docker scheduler and later change the scheduler to k3s globally or per app as needed.
In my opinion multi-node and elastic scaling has been way overblown over the last years of AWS/GCP/Azure marketing campaigns. They did a good job though 🤣
Haha yep. I think we also have to keep in mind that server hardware has continued to get better and better, which has made horizontal scaling less and less necessary.
So probably 50% marketing hype and 50% moore's law :)
No problem. I personally think Dokku would be a great platform to base something like this off of.
You can automate everything with bash commands and there's absolutely zero resource consumption at idle, because all Dokku does is provide a thin bash-based wrapper around Docker/K3s/Nomad.
Kamal - similar. But I didn't like version 1 which was quite unstable with weird design choices. Version 2 looks better and seems to have addressed the most serious concerns I had so it's definitely worth a look too, although my personal preference is to Dokku because Kamal requires some esoteric config file to get anything deployed. Some people like the config file though.
Dokku or Kamal might be the way to go - looks like I can have a lot more control vs. being dependent on Coolify's API and the docs seem extensive. Going to explore this route, thanks Ben
Yep, documentation is one of the big reasons I went with Dokku in addition to the better design choices. Seriously good docs - and that's how you can tell the maintainer gives a shit about the project
Coolify does have pretty decent docs as well, but definitely not as detailed as Dokku
I'm not a Coolify user and generally would not recommend it. Wrote a post here explaining why: ben-makes-stuff.beehiiv.com/p…
On the other hand, Dokku and Kamal work with the command line, meaning it's easy to write a simple bash script (and/or GitHub Actions script) to set everything up.
Overall: I think your pricing is reasonable but instead of paying $9 I'd rather have fun writing that bash script. I'm sure some people would be interested in something like this though.
Decent writeup on your issues with Coolify, but I disagree with saying needing two VPS nodes (one for Coolify) is a bad thing.
Coolify is supposed to be a self-hosted provisioning service alternative to the likes of Laravel Forge, for managing the setup of multiple apps. So the usage model in that sense is "correct".
Not familiar with Forge. But, regardless of what model is trying to be emulated, if solution 1 doesn't require an extra node for setup and solution 2 does, I'm going with solution 1 every time.
I'm not getting the point about multiple apps (again, maybe because I'm not familiar with anything related to Laravel) - you can configure multiple apps with Kamal, Dokku, K3s, etc without needing an extra node.
Ultimately: low cost, low complexity, and ease of automation is what I always optimize for and I think that's what most people should optimize for too.
Sure, I'm not saying you're wrong in your decision making. It's more that I'm trying to explain how/what Coolify is actually competing with as a solution rather than being a provisioning solution specific to what you might need.
I believe this is happening because Coolify has chosen to cater to those who "require" redundancy. It's a respectable choice, but in my opinion single (maybe beefy) node is what most indie hackers need (and should stick to)
100% agree. Most people do not need this extra crap, just deploy one VPS and put your apps on it. That was the point I was trying to make in my blog post as well.
It totally resonates with me. I especially appreciated the sane defaults subsection.
And wow, I didn't expect k3s to take nearly 15% of ram! I haven't used it in a while, maybe it got bloated?
Btw, have you tried k0s?
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked it.
Have not tried k0s - there are a few of these "kubernetes but simpler" tools that all attempt to prepackage k8s into an installer and make it more efficient. k0s appears to be a bit more customizable, but by default probably has the same issues I pointed out with k3s.
I think k3s/k0s are good tools if you need horizontal scaling - but seeing as:
1) Most people do not need horizontal scaling, at least not in the beginning
2) Dokku supports k3s as a scheduler: dokku.com/docs/deployment/sch…
=> You can just start off with Dokku + local docker scheduler and later change the scheduler to k3s globally or per app as needed.
Totally on the same page, I was just curious.
In my opinion multi-node and elastic scaling has been way overblown over the last years of AWS/GCP/Azure marketing campaigns. They did a good job though 🤣
Haha yep. I think we also have to keep in mind that server hardware has continued to get better and better, which has made horizontal scaling less and less necessary.
So probably 50% marketing hype and 50% moore's law :)
Looking further into Dokku and Kamal - thanks for the article and feedback on pricing
Agreed, love writing the bash scripts
No problem. I personally think Dokku would be a great platform to base something like this off of.
You can automate everything with bash commands and there's absolutely zero resource consumption at idle, because all Dokku does is provide a thin bash-based wrapper around Docker/K3s/Nomad.
Kamal - similar. But I didn't like version 1 which was quite unstable with weird design choices. Version 2 looks better and seems to have addressed the most serious concerns I had so it's definitely worth a look too, although my personal preference is to Dokku because Kamal requires some esoteric config file to get anything deployed. Some people like the config file though.
Dokku or Kamal might be the way to go - looks like I can have a lot more control vs. being dependent on Coolify's API and the docs seem extensive. Going to explore this route, thanks Ben
Yep, documentation is one of the big reasons I went with Dokku in addition to the better design choices. Seriously good docs - and that's how you can tell the maintainer gives a shit about the project
Coolify does have pretty decent docs as well, but definitely not as detailed as Dokku
So the best way to use coolify is to pay for coolify cloud and then get your own vps.