Migrating from Netlify to Coolify is a popular move for developers looking to escape escalating bandwidth pricing and per-seat team fees. While Netlify excels at serverless frontend hosting with automated edge deployments, its pricing model can become prohibitively expensive as traffic and database needs scale. Coolify offers a self-hosted, open-source alternative that runs on your own VPS infrastructure, such as DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or AWS. By making this switch, you retain the modern deployment experience of PaaS solutions while regaining complete control over your servers and eliminating recurring SaaS overhead.
Moving away from Netlify means transitioning from a managed serverless architecture to a self-hosted Docker-based environment. Coolify abstracts away the complexities of Docker, Nginx, and SSL generation, giving you a similar dashboard experience to Netlify or Vercel. However, because Coolify runs on your hardware, you are now responsible for server provisioning, database backups, and SSL certificate renewals. This guide walks you through the exact process of exporting your Netlify configuration, provisioning your Coolify server, and cutting over your production traffic without downtime.
For a 50-person team that's a significant annual saving.
🗺️ Migration Steps
Select a cloud provider like Hetzner or DigitalOcean and spin up a fresh Ubuntu instance with at least 2GB of RAM. Run the official Coolify installation script via SSH on your new server to set up the containerized management dashboard. Once the installation completes, access your Coolify web UI through your server IP and set up your admin credentials.
Log into your Netlify dashboard and review your site settings, including custom domain names, environment variables, and redirect rules. Export any Netlify-specific configuration files such as netlify.toml, as these define your build commands and headers. Note that Netlify Forms and Serverless Functions will need to be re-architected, as Coolify focuses on raw application and static site deployment rather than managed edge functions.
In the Coolify dashboard, create a new resource and connect your GitHub or GitLab repository containing your web project. Define your build pack, specifying whether it is a static site, Node.js app, or Docker container. Input all the environment variables previously stored in Netlify into Coolify's secure environment variable manager.
Add your production domain name to your Coolify application settings and update your DNS provider to point your A records to your Coolify server IP address. Coolify will automatically provision and renew SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt, replacing Netlify's automated edge SSL management. Verify that your DNS propagation is complete before proceeding to the final cutover.
Trigger a manual deployment inside Coolify to build your project on your own server and verify that the build logs show success. Once the application is running healthily on the preview URL, update your domain's DNS records to route 100% of live traffic to your Coolify instance. Test all critical user paths and API endpoints to ensure the migration was successful.
⚠️ Common Challenges & How to Avoid Them
Netlify Functions rely on AWS Lambda under the hood, whereas Coolify typically runs applications as persistent Docker containers. You will need to refactor serverless functions into a traditional Node.js or Python backend service running inside Coolify.
Netlify provides managed form handling and user authentication out of the box which will break when you leave. You must replace Netlify Forms with a third-party service like Formspree or set up a self-hosted backend handler, and migrate user authentication to a provider like Supabase or Auth0.
Unlike Netlify's fully managed CDN and hosting, Coolify requires you to maintain your own VPS security and data backups. Configure automated server snapshots with your cloud provider and set up database backup destinations inside Coolify to prevent data loss.
🔗 Get Started
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, unlike Netlify's per-site project model, Coolify allows you to host an unlimited number of websites, databases, and applications on a single VPS. You are only constrained by the CPU, RAM, and disk storage capacity of the server hardware you provision.
Netlify automatically generates unique preview URLs for every pull request merged or opened on GitHub. Coolify supports pull request deployments for certain application types, but it requires more manual configuration of webhooks and reverse proxies to match Netlify's seamless PR preview experience.
Coolify is open-source software with a self-hosted version that is 100% free to use with no limits on builds, bandwidth, or team members. However, you will still need to pay for the underlying VPS infrastructure where you install Coolify, such as a $5 to $20 monthly server fee.
Want a full feature and pricing comparison before you switch?
Read the Full Netlify vs Coolify Comparison →