Install Coolify on a Hostinger VPS: your own Vercel/Heroku for a flat price

What Coolify is, and when it's worth it

Coolify is an open-source platform you install on your own server. It gives you most of what Vercel, Netlify or Heroku do: connect a Git repo, push, and it builds and deploys with HTTPS. It also runs databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB) and one-click services, and it can deploy a preview for each pull request.

It's worth it when you run several apps and want one dashboard for all of them. If you only have one app and you're happy with a deploy script, the plain setup in our Next.js and GitHub Actions guides is lighter.

Which plan you need

Coolify needs at least 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of RAM to run itself, and builds happen on the same server. Builds are where memory runs out.

Option A — The Coolify template

Hostinger lists Coolify among its VPS OS templates. Choose it when you create the server, or reinstall an existing one from the VPS settings, and Coolify is installed for you on Ubuntu. Then skip to "First login" below.

Option B — Install it yourself

Start from a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 server that you've secured (SSH keys, updates, a firewall). Coolify's installer sets up Docker and everything it needs. Run it as root or with sudo:

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

First login

When the installer finishes, open `http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:8000` and create the admin account straight away. Until an account exists, whoever opens the URL first can claim the instance.

Coolify then asks where to deploy. Choose "This machine" (localhost) to run apps on the same server.

• •Port 8000 is the dashboard until you give it a domain.
• •Ports 6001 and 6002 carry the dashboard's realtime updates and the web terminal.
• •Ports 80 and 443 belong to Coolify's proxy (Traefik), which serves your apps with HTTPS.

Put the dashboard on your domain

Add an A record for a subdomain such as `coolify.example.com` pointing at the server, plus a wildcard `*.example.com` if you want Coolify to give every app its own subdomain automatically.

In Coolify, open Settings, enter `https://coolify.example.com` as the instance domain and save. The proxy requests a Let's Encrypt certificate, and the dashboard is now on HTTPS.

• Adding A records, step by step →

Deploy your first app

Using a GitHub repo as an example:

• •Projects → Add → pick the environment (production) → New resource.
• •Choose a public repository, or connect the Coolify GitHub App for private repos and automatic deploys on push.
• •Pick the build pack. Nixpacks detects Node, Next.js, Laravel, Django and most common stacks. Choose Dockerfile or Docker Compose if your repo has one.
• •Set the port your app listens on (3000 for Next.js), add environment variables, and set the domain, e.g. `https://app.example.com`.
• •Click Deploy and watch the build log. Later pushes to the branch redeploy automatically.

Lock down the ports

Coolify publishes ports through Docker, and Docker adds its own iptables rules that go around UFW. A UFW rule that blocks port 8000 won't actually block it. Use Hostinger's VPS firewall in hPanel instead, because it filters traffic before it reaches the server.

• The 10-minute VPS security checklist →

Backups and updates

Coolify can back up the databases it manages on a schedule, to the server or to S3-compatible storage such as Cloudflare R2 or Backblaze B2. Set an S3 target, because a backup on the same server doesn't help if the server is lost. Hostinger's weekly VPS backups and snapshots are a second safety net for the whole disk.

Updates are one click in the dashboard, and you can turn on automatic updates. Read the release notes before updating a busy server, and take a snapshot first.