StackSkipper · Comparisons
A Coolify alternative that holds no key to your server
Coolify is good, and for plenty of people it is the right answer. It is open source, free to run yourself, and Coolify Cloud runs it for you. The difference we would point you to is not a feature. It is how each of them gets into your server.
The key to your server
Coolify manages a server over SSH. Its control plane stores a private
key for every server it manages and runs its commands through it, as
root or as a user with password-free sudo.
Coolify's own security documentation says what follows from that: whoever
gains administrative access to the Coolify instance can reach every
server connected to it. With Coolify Cloud, that instance is Coolify's,
and it holds those keys for every customer.
StackSkipper holds no SSH key to your server and opens no port on it. An agent on the server connects out to us and does the work there: it pulls your images, runs them and reports back. If the machine has an SSH key at all, it is yours.
That is not a promise that nothing can go wrong. The agent starts your containers, and whatever tells it what to start is trusted — that is true of any deployment tool. What is not there is a standing key to your machine sitting in somebody's database.
Side by side
| Coolify, self-hosted | Coolify Cloud | StackSkipper | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control plane | Yours, on your server; Coolify asks for 2 cores and 2 GB of RAM for it | Run by Coolify | Run by us |
| How it reaches your server | SSH, with a stored key: root, or a user with password-free sudo |
The same, from Coolify's instance | An agent on the server connects out. No key held, no port opened |
| The server itself | One you already have; Coolify prepares it over SSH | Created through Terraform in your own cloud account — AWS, Hetzner, DigitalOcean or any Terraform provider | |
| Builds | From your Git repository, or a prebuilt image | Your CI builds the image; the server only runs it | |
| Databases and services | One-click databases and more than 280 ready-made services | A database is your own container with a volume, deployed like any image | |
| Operating system updates | Yours, by Coolify's own documentation | Yours as well — see below | |
| Price | Free | $5 a month for two servers, $3 for each one after | One project free; €20 a month for 3, €50 for 10, €90 for 25. Net |
| Source | Open source | Not open source | |
Coolify details as published on coolify.io and in its documentation on 25 September 2026. With all three, the server is billed to you by your cloud provider.
When Coolify is the better choice
- You want to push to Git and have it built. Coolify builds from source; StackSkipper expects an image from your CI.
- You want databases and services in one click. Coolify has hundreds ready. StackSkipper runs your images and nothing else.
- Price decides it. Self-hosted Coolify is free and Coolify Cloud costs less than any paid StackSkipper plan.
- You want the source. Coolify is open source; you can read it, run it and change it.
- You want nothing installed on your server beyond Docker. StackSkipper needs its agent there.
When StackSkipper is
- No standing key to your servers should exist anywhere but with you. That is the architecture, not a setting.
- Your images already come out of CI. StackSkipper is built around that one path, so the production server serves and never compiles. In Coolify it is one option among several.
- The server should be reproducible. It is created through Terraform in your account, not set up by hand beforehand and then handed over.
And the operating system?
Neither product patches it: Coolify's documentation leaves it with you even on Coolify Cloud, and so do we. If that is the part you would rather not track by hand, PatchPilot, also built by nowack.dev, shows what is pending on every server and installs it in a window you choose. The first three servers are free there.