Docker, Coolify, Railway, or nothing at all

There is no single right answer to "how should I deploy this": the right rung depends on what you are deploying. Static files need none of this. A database-backed application needs most of it. Prices below were checked against each vendor's own pricing page on 22 August 2026.

What are the actual options?

Four, roughly in order of how much machinery you take on:

Each rung removes one layer of your own responsibility and, generally, adds a line to your bill. None of them is wrong. The mistake is picking a rung because it is the one people talk about, not the one your project needs.

Rung one: is nothing at all a real option?

Yes, and it is the one most self-hosted-tool guides skip straight past. If what you are deploying is a static site, files with no server-side code running per request, a container, an orchestrator and a deployment platform are all machinery you are choosing to own for a job that does not require it. Push the built files to a CDN and you are done: no upgrade to run, no container image to rebuild when a base image gets a security patch, no server to keep awake.

Docket is worth naming plainly, since it is the product this guide sits on: static files plus two small endpoints, no Postgres, no Docker, no server process watching a port around the clock. For a Docket site specifically, the honest answer is rung one. That will not be true of every project. A tool with a real database, background jobs, or pages that need fresh data on every request has genuine reasons to sit further down, and the rest of this guide is for that case.

Rung two: what does plain Docker on a VPS actually involve?

The most control and the most manual work. Rent a server, install Docker, write a compose file describing your containers, and put a reverse proxy in front for TLS and routing. That proxy is where the first hour usually goes, because pointing it at the wrong address gives you a 502 between the proxy and the container that works fine from the box itself:

services:
  app:
    image: your-app:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
  proxy:
    image: caddy:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile

That is the whole shape of it. You own every line: OS security updates, rotating TLS certificates or trusting a tool like Caddy to do it automatically, restarting a crashed container, rebuilding an image when a dependency needs patching. Nobody else notices a stalled container for you.

The upside is that nothing here is proprietary. A compose file and a VPS are portable to any provider that rents you a Linux box. The cheapest real VPS price we could confirm is Hetzner Cloud, from about EUR 6 a month, checked 22 August 2026 against their own price API rather than their marketing page, which would not render the figure. VAT was not stated on that source, so confirm both the current number and its VAT treatment yourself.

Rung three: what does Coolify actually buy you?

Coolify sits directly on top of rung two rather than replacing it. It is Apache-2.0 licensed and free forever to self-host, describing itself as "an open-source and self-hostable alternative to Vercel, Heroku, Netlify and Railway". You still rent and run the underlying server; Coolify runs on it and gives you a deployment interface, connect a repository, define a service, it builds and redeploys on push, the workflow of a managed platform sitting on infrastructure you still own and patch.

If you would rather not run the Coolify server yourself, their hosted cloud does that layer for you at $5 a month for two servers, plus $3 a month per additional server, with 20 per cent off if you pay annually. It is not confirmed whether that cloud offering has a free tier below the $5 plan; only the paid tier was visible when checked.

The honest trade: you get a deployment interface and a nicer workflow than raw compose files, and you are still responsible for the server underneath, whether that server is one you rent yourself or one inside Coolify's cloud plan.

Rung four: how does Railway's pricing actually work?

Railway removes the server entirely. Point it at a repository, it builds and runs your application, and you never touch an operating system. That is a different kind of simplicity from Coolify: Coolify still asks you to think about a server, Railway does not.

The pricing needs unpacking, because it is not a flat monthly fee, it is a credit allowance against metered usage. Published tiers: Free at $0 a month with $1 of monthly usage credits, Hobby at $5 a month including $5 of credits, Pro at $20 a month per workspace including $20 of credits, Enterprise priced on request. A 30-day trial separately gives $5 of credits.

Past whatever credit your plan includes, usage is billed per second for memory, CPU and volumes, plus $0.05 per GB of egress. That is the detail worth sitting with: a credit allowance is a starting balance, not a price ceiling. Read "Hobby is $5 a month" as "Hobby costs at least $5 a month". It is not confirmed whether the $0 Free plan needs a card on file, so check that yourself first.

So which rung is right?

Match the rung to what you are actually running, not to what sounds most serious. A static site belongs at rung one regardless of the rest of your stack. A database-backed application with background jobs and real infrastructure to reason about is a legitimate case for rung two, three or four, and the choice between those three is really about how much of the server you want to think about yourself, not about which is "better".

For the fuller cost picture of self-hosting a customer-facing tool, database, mail provider and hours a month included, see self-hosting a feature request board. For which of a tool's jobs genuinely need a server at all, see static site or server. If a VPS is the rung you land on, its running cost over a year is in running it on a cheap VPS.

Frequently asked questions