Stacktape vs. Coolify

Coolify and Stacktape represent fundamentally different approaches: self-hosted open-source platform versus managed AWS infrastructure service.

Self-hosted vs. managed infrastructure

Coolify is an open-source PaaS that you install and run on your own servers - whether that's a VPS, Raspberry Pi, EC2 instance, or your laptop. You're responsible for maintaining the platform, servers, and underlying infrastructure.

Stacktape is a managed service that deploys directly to your AWS account. While you own the AWS resources, Stacktape handles the deployment orchestration, scaling, and infrastructure management through AWS's battle-tested services.

Any server vs. AWS ecosystem integration

Coolify's strength is its flexibility - it can run on any server with Docker support. This gives you complete control over your hosting environment and costs, but requires you to manage security patches, backups, monitoring, and scaling yourself.

Stacktape integrates deeply with the AWS ecosystem, giving you access to 35+ managed services like RDS databases, S3 storage, Lambda functions, and ElasticSearch. You get enterprise-grade security, automated backups, and global scalability without managing the underlying infrastructure.

Docker-focused vs. multi-architecture support

Coolify is primarily Docker-focused, allowing you to deploy any Docker-compatible service. It's excellent for containerized applications and provides a Heroku-like experience for Docker workflows.

Stacktape supports both containers and serverless Lambda functions, giving you more architectural choices. You can combine different deployment models in the same application and optimize for cost and performance based on your specific use cases.

Open source vs. commercial support

As an open-source project, Coolify is free to use but relies on community support and self-service troubleshooting. You need technical expertise to deploy, maintain, and troubleshoot the platform.

Stacktape provides commercial support, comprehensive documentation, and handles platform maintenance for you. This allows your team to focus on building applications rather than managing deployment infrastructure.

Manual scaling vs. AWS auto-scaling

With Coolify, scaling means manually adding more servers to your Docker Swarm cluster or upgrading your existing servers. You're responsible for capacity planning and scaling decisions.

Stacktape leverages AWS's auto-scaling capabilities across services like Lambda, ECS, and RDS. Your applications can automatically scale up during traffic spikes and scale down to save costs, without manual intervention.