Introduction

No matter what type of server you have (localhost or remote), you need the following requirements.

• Connectivity
  • SSH connectivity between Coolify and the server with SSH key authentication.

    Tip

    Your public key should be added to root user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you do not have an SSH Key, you can generate one through Coolify with a simple button or you can generate one manually.

• Docker Engine (24+)

Types

• Localhost: the server where Coolify is installed.
• Remote Server: could be any remote linux server.

Localhost

To be able to manage the server where Coolify is running on, the docker container of Coolify should reach the host server through SSH. You can use localhost as a server where all your resources are running, but it is not recommended as high server usage could prevent to use Coolify.

Tip

You can use our Cloud version, so you only need a server for your resources.

You will get a few other things included with the cloud version, like free email notifications, s3 storage, etc based on your subscription plan.

Remote Server

You can connect any type of servers to Coolify. It could be a VPS, a Raspberry PI or a laptop running Linux.

Tip

If you don't have a server or server provider yet, we prefer to use Hetzner. You can use our referral link. It will help us to keep the project alive.

Cloudflare Tunnels

You can also set to use Cloudflare Tunnels for your servers.

Tip

Coolify does not install cloudflared on your server, it needs to be done prior. All it does is to add the right ProxyCommand (ProxyCommand <ip / hostname> access ssh --hostname %h) to all ssh connections.

Multiple Server Configuration

When setting up multiple servers in Coolify, it's important to understand how traffic routing works:

• Independent Proxy Handling: Each server runs its own proxy that handles incoming requests for applications deployed on that server.
• Direct Traffic Flow: Traffic for applications deployed on secondary servers goes directly to those servers, not through the main Coolify server.
• DNS Configuration: You must point your domain DNS to the IP address of the server where the application is deployed, not to the main Coolify server.

Role of the Main Server

The main Coolify server:

• Provides the management UI to control applications on all connected servers
• Performs SSH connections to secondary servers for deployment and management
• Conducts health checks and monitoring
• Does NOT route or proxy traffic to applications on secondary servers

This architecture reduces latency and improves application performance by eliminating additional network hops.

Features

Disk Cleanup threshold

You can read more about Automated Cleanup and the disk cleanup threshold in the Automated Cleanup section.

Wildcard Domain

You can set a wildcard domain (example: http://example.com) to your server, so you can easily assign generated domains to all the resources connected to this server. Example: Your application UUID is vgsco4o. If you have the example set, you will get the following FQDN: http://vgsco4o.example.com If you do not have any wildcard domain set, Coolify will generate a sslip.io domain, which is free & magical domain that you can use anywhere. In this case, it will be: http://vgsco4o.127.0.0.1.sslip.io, where 127.0.0.1 is your server's IP.

Tip

When using multiple servers, remember that each application's domain must point to the specific server where that application is deployed.

Proxy

• Traefik: Automatically configure Traefik(v2) based on your deployed resources.
• Custom/None: You will configure a proxy manually (only for advanced users).

Tip

Soon we will support Nginx & Caddy with fully automated configuration.

Traefik

Coolify uses Traefik proxy by default to create a reverse proxy for your resources.

Tip

Traefik only starts when you did not select any proxy for your server and you have a domain configured for a resource or your Coolify instance itself.

Dynamic Configuration

You can always add your own configuration to the proxy settings from Coolify's UI (/server/<server_uuid>/proxy).