Experimenting with different hosts has been a pattern with this site. First GitHub Pages, then AWS EC2, then Netlify, then Surge.sh. More recently I set this site up with Vercel because I enjoy using their platform with Next.JS.

Static and Serverless Hosting

Surge.sh, Netlify, and Vercel are all insanely easy to get a static site online. Netlify and Vercel do a great job guessing how to build your site, they're particularly great options if you're running serverless functions.

I'm a big proponent of open-source, and tools that are community-forward. I enjoy Vercel's products, but by the same token they're extremely product-forward.

Coolify.io

I recently learned of Coolify.io on Mastodon. Coolify aims to be the FOSS version of Netlify and Vercel. For example, the dashboard you see in Netflify/Vercel, Coolify has their own version of this. And it's not just monitoring, it's the whole process of managing and deploying multiple sites onto your server. That's the other great benefit..

Hetzner

With a tool like Coolify, you're free to choose where you want to host your sites. I'm fan of how Hetzner operates and engages with the community. If you're not familiar with a big hosting platform like AWS, it's not a bad idea to use this as an opportunity to learn. I'm at a point where know enough to work in AWS when I have to, for my personal projects, I'd like to use the platforms I truly believe in. Coincidentally, Coolify also recommends Hetzner.

Takeaway

I'm still in the process of learning about working with Coolify. It uses NixPacks to make configuration of some projects less configuration heavy. Which so far is working, though I have found this less "out-of-the-box" than I hoped with NixPacks not paying attention to the package.json engine or the .nvmrc.

For more complicated projects, I am having to build a Dockerfile to get them running. Not crazy about having to do that, but I'll see how it goes.

For git integration it does have everything you would need to have a project automatically building when you push to a repo, though you have to find the settings for that and set them up. I was hoping that would've been part of a more streamlined git setup process. But, maybe one day Coolify will have it.

I'll try to remember to update this post in 6 months if I'm still using Coolify. I'm a big fan of the idea.