How to implement Coolify, the self-hosted alternative to Heroku

Vercel's pricing model recently came under fire after Cara, a creative platform, incurred a $95,000 bill following a spike in user activity, prompting developers to explore alternatives like Coolify. Coolify is a free, open-source, and self-hostable platform that provides cloud service convenience without unexpected costs, appealing to developers seeking more control over their infrastructure. It aligns with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles by offering declarative configuration, version control integration, automated deployments, and infrastructure management through a user-friendly interface, unlike more complex tools like Terraform and Ansible. The article discusses setting up Coolify, deploying resources, and creating a sample application using Node.js and Next.js. It also highlights how Coolify facilitates the management and deployment of resources by leveraging Git-based deployment and webhooks for automated updates.