Vercel vs Coolify

At a Glance

Vercel

Coolify

Vercel

Coolify

No features listed.

Vercel

Pros

Zero-config deployment for Next.js — push to GitHub and your app is live with edge caching, preview URLs, and analytics in minutes+196
Preview deployments per pull request are a game changer for design review and stakeholder feedback without needing a staging environment+178
The edge network is extremely fast and the global CDN means static assets load in under 100ms for users anywhere in the world+161
Automatic SSL, custom domains, and environment variables are managed through the dashboard without touching any config files+147
The analytics and Web Vitals integration shows real user performance data per route without adding any tracking code+129

Hosting

Vercel vs Cloudflare Pages

Hosting

Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare Pages

Hosting

Vercel vs Railway

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Cons

Pricing jumps sharply between the hobby free plan and the $20/mo Pro plan, with no middle tier for small commercial projects+184
Serverless function execution time and memory limits can surprise you in production — a long-running background job will silently time out+162
Bandwidth overages on the free plan are hard to predict and a viral post can result in an unexpected bill overnight+148
Vendor lock-in is significant if you use Vercel-specific features like ISR, Edge Middleware, or the Analytics product+121

Coolify

Pros

Completely self-hosted on your own VPS — you pay $5/mo for a Hetzner server instead of Vercel's $20/mo for the same capability+178
Supports deploying Docker containers, static sites, databases, and any Nixpacks-compatible framework with a single UI+154
Automatic SSL certificate management with Let's Encrypt means you don't need to configure Nginx or Certbot manually+131
One-click deployment for popular open source tools like Plausible, Gitea, and n8n saves hours of server configuration+118

Cons

Being self-hosted means you're responsible for server maintenance, uptime, and security patching — it's not hands-off like managed platforms+152
Some advanced features have rough edges and the documentation doesn't always match the current UI after updates+127
No built-in global CDN — if you need edge distribution you still need Cloudflare in front of your self-hosted server+98
Database backups are configurable but require manual setup — there's no one-click automated backup with retention policies+79