Setting Up Coolify: Your Self-Hosted Vercel on Ubuntu Server

Once your Ubuntu Server is installed, hardened with SSH, and network-configured, the logical next step is giving it a deployment interface. Coolify is an open-source platform that transforms your bare server into a private cloud. You get a visual dashboard to deploy apps from Git repositories, spin up PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, or MongoDB databases, and automatically provision SSL certificates for your domains. Everything runs entirely on your own hardware with zero monthly fees.

1. What You Can Do With Coolify

Before installing, here is what Coolify gives you out of the box:

• App Deployments: Connect a GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket repository. Coolify automatically pulls the code, detects the runtime (Node.js, Python, PHP, Go, static HTML, Docker), builds it, and deploys it as a running container.
• One-Click Databases: Spin up PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, or Redis with isolated storage volumes, auto-generated credentials, and scheduled backups.
• Automatic SSL: Built-in Caddy and Traefik reverse proxy support. Point your domain at the server, add it in the dashboard, and HTTPS is provisioned via Let's Encrypt automatically. No manual Certbot setup needed.
• Multiple Servers: Connect additional remote machines to the same Coolify dashboard and deploy workloads across all of them from one interface.
• Preview Deployments: Automatically deploy pull request branches as isolated preview environments, just like Vercel's preview URLs.

2. What the Coolify Dashboard Looks Like

After installation, Coolify is accessible at http://your-server-ip:8000 in your browser. Below is a representative mockup of the main dashboard panels you will interact with. You can also try the live demo at demo.coolify.io before installing.

3. Installing Coolify on Your Ubuntu Server

SSH into your server and run the official one-line installer with sudo (it requires root). This downloads and executes the Coolify setup script, automatically installs Docker, configures the required services, and starts the dashboard:

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

The installation takes 3–5 minutes. When it completes, you will see a success message:

Congratulations! Coolify is ready to use.
Open your browser and navigate to http://your-server-ip:8000
to complete the setup.

# SSH first — never lock yourself out, then the Coolify dashboard port
sudo ufw allow 22/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8000/tcp
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

After opening the port, verify Coolify's containers are all running by checking Docker:

docker ps | grep coolify

All Coolify containers should show a status of Up. If any show Exited, restart the Coolify service:

docker restart coolify

4. Accessing the Dashboard & First-Time Setup

Open a web browser on any device connected to the same network as your server and navigate to port 8000. Get your server IP by running hostname -I on the server, then enter it in your browser:

http://your-server-ip:8000

You will be greeted by the Coolify onboarding wizard. Complete these steps:

1. Create Admin Account: Enter a username, email address, and strong password. This becomes your primary administrator login for the entire dashboard.
2. Instance Settings: Set an instance name (e.g. my-homelab) and optionally a public domain if you have one. You can skip this and configure it later under Settings → Instance.
3. Server Validation: Coolify automatically detects the local server where it is installed. Click Validate & Continue. It runs a pre-flight check verifying Docker is accessible, disk space is sufficient, and network connectivity is active.

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

After logging back in, if Coolify is already running, restart it to pick up the new socket permissions:

docker restart coolify

5. Deploying Your First Application

Navigate to Projects → New Project → Add New Resource → Application. Then follow these steps:

1. Connect Git Source: Click GitHub and authorize Coolify to access your account. Select the repository you want to deploy.
2. Choose Branch: Select the deployment branch (e.g. main or production).
3. Build Configuration: Coolify auto-detects the runtime from your repo's package.json, Dockerfile, requirements.txt, or Procfile. Set the build command (e.g. npm run build) and start command (e.g. npm start) if not auto-detected.
4. Set Domain: In the Domains field, enter the domain or subdomain you want (e.g. app.your-domain.com). Make sure your DNS A record is already pointing to your server's public IP before this step.
5. Click Deploy. Coolify pulls the code, runs the build, starts the container, and provisions HTTPS automatically. You can monitor the real-time build log stream directly in the browser.

6. Accessing Coolify Remotely & On Mobile

Since Coolify is a web application, you can access your dashboard from any device - phone, tablet, or laptop - as long as you can reach your server's IP.

• Same local network: Navigate directly to http://your-server-ip:8000 in any browser. No configuration needed.
• Outside your network via SSH tunnel: Run the tunnel command below from your remote machine. While this session stays open, open http://localhost:8000 locally and it routes securely through the encrypted SSH channel:

ssh -L 8000:localhost:8000 administrator_user@your-server-ip

• On mobile (same Wi-Fi): Open your mobile browser and navigate to http://your-server-ip:8000 while on the same network as your server.
• On mobile (remote access): Use the Termius app to set up an SSH tunnel from your phone, or configure your router's port forwarding to expose port 8000 externally (not recommended without a domain and SSL in front of it).

cd /data/coolify/source && docker compose up -d

Check the current service state to confirm it is active and running:

docker ps --filter "name=coolify" --format "table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}"

7. Summary Checklist

• Coolify Installed: Single curl command bootstraps the full platform on Ubuntu Server.
• Dashboard Access: Available at http://your-server-ip:8000 in any browser on the local network.
• App Deployments: Connect GitHub repos, set build commands, and deploy with automatic SSL on custom domains.
• Databases: One-click PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB with isolated volumes and auto-generated credentials.
• Remote Access: Access locally on the network or securely via SSH tunnel from anywhere. Auto-starts on reboot via systemd.