Hey! Long time no see. 👋

I have quite a lot of updates. Since we talked, I've quit freelancing to focus on Coolify version 4 entirely. The development speed is huge! 📈

We are at version 120 of the beta version. Many new features have been added, and we are closer and closer to the first non-beta version.

Even though it is beta, it is pretty stable. Lots of companies / freelancers / agencies are using it daily!

Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Contact me.

Sponsorship

As You know - if not, you will now 😅 - I've been burning my savings since I quit freelancing. I posted my feelings on Twitter about this a few days ago (link) and some of the responses encouraged me to take some action.

I love what I do with Coolify: help you host on your own things simpler, cheaper, without vendor lock-in, with no features behind a paywall, free & open.

To be able to do the development at the same speed as I do in these few months:

I need your help! 💜

I never will stop developing Coolify, however, if I start freelancing again, the development will slow down as I cannot concentrate on it 100%. 📉

Gosh, it is so hard to write this down... 😣

The biggest help you can do is to financially support me & my projects through:

👉 GitHub Sponsors

👉 Open Collective

I cannot thank you enough if you do and help me keep up the same momentum! 💜

State of Version 4

I've added 99% of the features to version 4 from 3, and even more. Just a list of plus things in v4:

• Monitoring of your applications and servers.
• Server automation (cleanups, checks, etc).
• Notification system to notify you what is happening with your servers/applications (supported channels are Telegram, Email, Discord at the moment).
• Scheduled and automated backups for all kinds of databases locally to your server or to an S3-compatible remote storage (You can even host a MinIO instance with one click on your server with Coolify, and point all backups to it! 🤯)
• Webhooks (you can initial a deployment from your CMS, GitHub Actions, anywhere)
• Lots of services (https://coolify.io/docs/one-click-services) and the list is growing.
• You can customize anything for your needs.
• Clone your projects with all the applications/databases/services included. If you have clients, you can quickly replicate a whole environment to a different server!
• You can execute any command on your server without leaving Coolify's UI (full terminal integration coming soon).
• Etc.

What's next?

• CLI to manage everything from your terminal.
• Fully observability. Send logs/metrics to your favorite 3rd party services (Axiom, Datadog, Newrelic), or self-host your own with an open-source observability system, like Signoz or HyperDx (or with Loki + Grafana).
• Load balancing between several standalone servers.
• Integrate with Hetzner, GCP, AWS, etc to quickly integrate new servers.
• Docker Swarm integration.
• Kubernetes integration.
• Etc.

Cloud

A month ago, I started to offer a cloud version, where you do not need to host Coolify itself, but you can still use your servers, so there is no vendor lock-in! 🔓

It starts with a $5/month tier, equivalent if you host your Coolify on a server and add remote servers for your applications/resources.

It is a highly available Coolify instance, always ready, and up-to-date.

For more information: https://coolify.io/pricing

Thank you for reading my updates! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Hello everyone! 👋

Long time no see. I hope everything is good with you! 💜

A few things have happened since my previous email. There are two topics I would like to share with you.

Coolify ⚒️

I’m super excited for the upcoming weeks. I’m working intensively to release the latest and probably the largest update for Coolify, version 4. Super close to finalizing it. 🤞

It won’t be just open-sourced (as always), but I will also start a cloud (but paid) version to make it even simpler to self-host on your servers. First, it will be a BYOS (Bring-your-own-server); later on, I will also try to provide a fully hosted option based on how people like it. All features included in the cloud version will be open-sourced, so don’t worry.

Something new ✨

This is an unusual part. I want to try a different approach to making an app or validating an idea - I’m a bit scared.

That is why let me introduce SafeTyper, a privacy-focused Grammarly alternative where YOU own what you type on your keyboard. No monthly fees - pay once, use forever. The initial version will be based on OpenAI’s GPT (same as ChatGPT); later, I will add open-source / self-hostable Language Models.

You may ask, but OpenAI is not privacy-focused, right?! And you are partly correct.

For MVP, it is good, especially if you use their API (SafeTyper will) they won't add the request to their model, only if you use ChatGPT + can you delete all your data easily anytime.

And here comes the part that I’m scared of. The browser extension (it will be a browser extension, yes) is not ready yet. I do not even start to code it. First I would like to know if there is a need for it.

That is why I shared the idea on Twitter on Monday with an early bird payment link - and it looks like people like the idea. In the first 24 hours, I’ve got 17 sales, which is very good for a single tweet. 🤩 Link to the tweet.

If you would like to support my idea, here you can join that beautiful 17 people:

Important: In case this idea does not reach the minimum required target for validation, I will refund everyone.

Features

Initial features:

• Fix grammar errors in any language.
• Learn from your mistakes. It will show your mistakes, so you will constantly improve yourself.
• It will be a browser extension as MVP.

Happy coding & have a nice day! 👾

I've got an unexpected mail this week from ProductHunt.

Coolify has been nominated for the Golden Kitty Award in the Developer Tools of 2022 category! 🤯

The Golden Kitty Award is a famous award between developers and entrepreneurs. Each year, the ten best applications created and launched on ProductHunt are nominated to this list in different categories. The community can vote for a winner in each category.

It is insane! I never thought this would be possible, especially since Coolify is between huge names in this category.

This is mostly thanks to you! Without you, it won't be there. 💜

If you have a few minutes (and have a ProductHunt account), please help me upvote Coolify here.

Appreciate it! 💜

Happy coding & have a nice day! 👾

I wish you a happy & productive new year! 🚀

So here we go, 2023 started. It is time for new years resolutions, right? A new year, a new beginning - they say. I wouldn't say I like this phrase. Does it mean we only have one chance to change things? Could we only make a plan once a year? No.

I more like:

Every day is a new beginning.

That means you can change your life every day, no matter if it's a sunny summer day or a cold winter.

You should have some goals every time of the year and should work to reach them consistently, not just in a burst of productivity in January (like in most of the gyms 😁).

So I'm not making a new year's resolution. Instead, I still follow the plans that were set in July.

It's been six months since I quit my daily job to be a solopreneur (often called an Indie Hacker) and pursue my dreams. But what dreams, you may ask?

My absolute dream is to have the ability to choose what to spend my time on.

This includes spending time with my family, making applications while sharing my progress with the world, and having fun. It is so simple.

The last six months have been like this. All thanks to you! 💜

But I would like to take the next big step.

The Game Plan

This plan is not new. It changed a bit since the initial one.

I want to focus on you, the community, by making things more transparently, build the most requested features and make open-source applications that helps you in your daily work & life.

The other thing is to make content about interesting new technologies, services, the pros and cons about being a solopreneur, etc.

These two things will help me to reach my goals.

Coolify

First of all, there were a lot of updates for Coolify that I did not share on this newsletter for a few months now.

If you are interested in "real-time" updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter / Mastodon.

• Community templates for Services
• Docker Compose support (beta)
• System-wide GitHub/GitLab Apps (beta)
• Custom SSL Certificates (beta)
• Deploy Dockerfiles with simple copy&paste (beta)
• Import any public repositories from git (without git integration).
• Custom Docker Registries
• Use Private Docker images
• Save Docker images to Docker registries
• Better ARM support

Coolify itself is not self-sustainable (~$200/month from your generous donations 💜).

To be sustainable, I need around $3000/month. That would be more than enough to live happily with my family and do what I love.

That is why I decided to make a cloud (not free) version, where I provide the Coolify instance, but you bring your server. You will have the same functionalities in the free version as in the cloud version, so there won't be paid-only features.

This has been delayed because I need to rewrite some parts to be able to provide such a service.

Technical details incoming ⚠

I'm currently rewriting the backend part from pure Fastify to tRPC based, so I have a separation of frontend and API/remote requests. This will enable you to have a CLI tool to manage your instances from the command line, better integration with 3rd party software, webhooks to include Coolify into your current flow, etc.

This improves a lot the stability of Coolify and enables a lot of contributions from the community. These topics will be the most important things in Q1.

Small Bets

These bets are things I would like to do for a long time, but I was afraid, had no time or had no opportunity (because I worked in a 9-5 job).

But I realized I have everything now to be able to do it (except I'm still scared 😅), I just need to be consistent.

Youtube

I love the process of making videos. Writing a script, thinking of punchlines, editing videos/photos together, etc.

So I will do short videos on my Youtube channel from next week. They will probably be silly ones first, but I would like to get used to making them.

The main topics will be:

1. Share exciting projects, libraries, and services, how they work, how to use them in a short and (hopefully) funny format. If you enjoy them, I will make longer videos with real-life examples.
2. Monthly/weekly project updates.
3. Share my knowledge.

Twitch

I also would like to connect you in live sessions. This idea has been with me for a year now. That is why I will start live streaming on my Twitch channel.

The purpose would be to make our community a bit natural & open, so you can join to work alongside me, ask questions, see how I'm working on my projects, see all my mistakes (😅), and make exciting projects blazingly fast from 0, but the most importantly to have fun.

How will I achieve all of these? With small steps, every day, consistently.
Will I be able to achieve all of these? Let's see in a few months. 🙂

Conclusion

It will be hard. Very hard. But I would like to work towards my dreams.

Happy coding & have a nice day! 👾

I wish all of you a happy and successful year! 🎉  Thank you for being here, supporting me and my projects in any way, because without you, I won't be here where I'm now. 💜

Lots of things happened to me this year. I quit my job, started to take Coolify seriously, doubled the number of installations of Coolify (2k to 4k), Akamai made a youtube video about Coolify, I was on a podcast, etc.

The most important thing is that I could spend more time with my family. 💜

Of course there were a lot of downs, for example, MRR from  ~$500 MRR went down to ~$150, so my projects are still not financially sustainable (I would need around 2k MRR for that), but I enjoy every second of it. 🙂

The past two years were strange, and probably 2023 will be the same. But no matter how hard things are, we need to go forward, keep pushing our limits, but the most important thing is having fun. Enjoy our life's, because we have only one.

That is why, I have a lots of plans for 2023. The most important thing is to be consistent, not just with coding, but with other things.

I want to build things more publicly, more transparently, and more efficiently, while having fun. Focus on you, the community, because as I said, without you, I won't be here.

I will share The Game Plan for the upcoming year in a few days/weeks, which will include most - if not all - of the things I would like to focus on next.

Spoiler: It will be super exciting & cool! 🤩

It is not a new years resolution (I do not like them) - I just had time to think about my plans while I was not coding for ~two weeks (yeah, my hands are shaking and ready to code next week 😁).

Once again. Thank you for everything! 🙏 💜

Happy coding & have a nice day!

Hello everyone! 👋

School/kindergarten started for my kids + cold weather = wacky days (If you have children, you know what I mean). Let’s get started.

Coolify

• Released 19 new versions. 🚀

New features like:

• Restart applications without rebuilding (change secrets on the fly)
• Better monorepo support
• Auto-update your Coolify instance
• System-Wide GitHub/GitLab Apps (beta)

Database branching (alpha)

• So excited about this. It will allow you to create database branches for Preview Deployments automatically so that you won’t mess up your database schema during staging versions.

New services like:

• Weblate
• Grafana
• Appwrite version 1
• Trilium

New databases like:

• EdgeDB

And a lot of fixes and more minor features.

What’s Next?

I’m so excited about the next month (that is almost ended 😅) because I will add a massive feature around services. Small teaser:

Small Bets

Unfortunately, I do not have any updates on this topic. 😞

What’s Next?

Make a schedule! That is super important. I really would like to focus on making videos and live streams, but there is always something else to do. So I need to come up with a schedule and just DO IT!

Thanks for taking some time to read about me and my journey!

Have a nice day! 🙂

Hello everyone! 👋

Initially, I thought I would send an update every week, but that would be a bit forced for me (sometimes I’m busy freelancing or taking care of my family and do not have much to share), and also I do not want to spam your inbox.

So I switch to a monthly base instead.

Here we go.

General

After a year of waiting for approval, coolLabs organization over Github got approved to access Github Sponsors! This is a big step to being financially sustainable because 90% of people are going to Coolify’s repository. 👍

Thanks to everyone who already supported my project over there.🙏

(Opencollective will be there as an option as well)

Coolify

• Released 28 new versions (🤯), with cool features like Remote Docker Engine support, better ARM support, Appwrite as a service, Heroku build pack, etc.
• After Heroku’s announcement, our Discord server has been blown up. A lot of people are looking for alternatives and considering Coolify as an alternative. 🤩
• The landing page of Coolify has been updated with the documentation.

Small bets

• I’ve made one-minute video about HTMX. It is just a fun video, but I really enjoyed making it and would like to make more (already have a few transcripts in my library). 🙂

I try to make more content in different forms, but it is hard to achieve and I think I found the cause.

It is related to that I worked for a big corporation for 10+ years. I need to rewire my brain to have a schedule - this is an upcoming blog post!

Thanks for taking some time to read about me and my journey!

Have a nice day!

Hey, Andras here! 👋

A month went by & exciting stuff happened, especially with Coolify.
If you are a Coolify user, you probably noticed that your instance is already on version 3 for a while. It is because I have completely rewritten the code architecture of Coolify.

- Backend from SvelteKit's Endpoints to Fastify to be able to use advanced things like advanced integrations (you will be able to add Coolify to your usual CI/CD process), WebSockets, etc.
- Scheduling & Queue jobs from BullMq to Bree to be able to support more features, like cronjobs.

But that is not all!

Today (2022.08.11), I released version 3.2.0, which has exciting updates (you can read them here). The main points I'm excited about are:

1. Remote Docker Engine support - You can add an unlimited number of servers to one Coolify instance, use it as a control plane/dashboard, and deploy your resources like before, just on remote servers. 🤯
2. Re-licensing from AGPL to Apache 2.0 will open windows to custom integrations that I'm super excited about! 🥳

Woah. It is a lot.

----

GitHub Sponsors:

After almost two years, my GitHub Sponsors page has been approved. So if you would like to sponsor my dreams, you can do it on GitHub (the same way on OpenCollective): https://github.com/sponsors/coollabsio.


If you do not want to miss any updates, You can also join our Discord server or follow me on Twitter.


Thank you very much for all the support!

Happy coding & have a nice day!
Andras Bacsai

Hello everyone! 👋

(Someone noted to me that my last issue went to spam. Unfortunately, I cannot control that part, but if this keeps happening, I will try to use my newsletter solution for the coolLabs newsletter.)

It’s been more than three weeks since I started my journey and this newsletter. Wow! Time flies, right?

Since the last issue (18 days ago), again, lots of things happened.

Let’s see what exactly.

Coolify

• Released 4 new version, with a few smaller features.
• Worked hard on a tremendous feature, that will allow users to integrate infinite number of servers into one single Coolify instance. 🤯 It’s called Remote Docker Engine. It will open up a lot of new use-cases.

What’s next?

1. I planned to release that new feature this week, but I realized (with the help of my community) that I should not. (That means I can add more improvements and features. 😅)
2. Will start greatly improving the documentation, contribution guides and all other non-development things for Coolify. This is an important topic that I unfortunately do not like to do all the time, but I understand it’s importance.

I probably could change that, if I do it live on Twitch? 🤔 We can talk about other stuff, while I write the documentation.

Freelancing

I’ve been busy working on webstudio.is. The idea of what Oleg (founder) imagined is pretty neat, I cannot wait to show every features that we are working on.

What’s next?

Other than working on webstudio, I plan to make my first portfolio page. I never had one, so it will be fun to do make it! Why? I would like to try freelancing for others as well with a few hours / week and I think a good portfolio page is a strict requirement.

Small bets

This topic was on hold in the past weeks, but I plan to take a huge step and:

• Start live-streaming on Twitch in August.
• Make a real (longer than 6 seconds 😂) Youtube video.

Other than these two, I would like to start writing my first e-book. It will be a complete book about Docker.

I know what you think. There are plenty of other e-books out there with a similar topic, then why? The answer is simple.

If you learn something new, you probably read about it in several places, right? Because each place has been written by a different person, with different tone, different words and you are searching for the one, that you most like and understand.

So what if there are a few people out there who likes mine? 🙂

Thanks for taking some time to read about me and my journey!

Have a nice day!

Hey! 👋

First, thank you very much for being interested in my journey! Your support gives me a lot of motivation! ❤️

The first week🤯

It was mindblowing, I completed so many things and received so many good vibes from everyone! But also, it has been a bit chaotic from a schedule point of view.

The following week’s task is to make a consistent schedule each day - what to do when. I will make a list of what I would like to achieve each day at a minimum level. Everything above that is just a plus!👍

Achievements🎯

• Released the next major release of Coolify.
• I wrote a blog post about why I’ve made this move.
• Done some freelancer work on webstudio.is. It is still in alpha, but the concept is mind-blowing!
• I’m starting a new blog dedicated to coolLabs and have already started a post - spoiler: You do not need scalable servers at all! (the title could change 😁)

Small Bets 👀

(Trying out new things - inspired by @dvassalo)

This week I have made a 6 seconds Youtube video! 😂 (full length coming soon!)

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m super introverted, so it is a huge step for me.

I really enjoyed the whole process (20 mins for 6 seconds 😅 never recorded/edited a video before) and that I can add my personality to it. 🤪

For next week, I will plan another, even bigger step here. I’m afraid! 😱

Other Cool Things😎

• Nicolas - a Coolify user - wrote a blog post about how he uses Coolify’s Traefik integration. It is insane!

Summary

Whoa. It is a lot for a week, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

Thanks for taking some time to read this issue!

Have a nice day!

Hey, Andras here!

Today is a special day for me and coolLabs.
After weeks of thinking, I've finally quit my day job to pursue my dreams and become an indie hacker!
Sounds exciting and terrifying, right? Yes, it is.

From next week, I will work on Coolify and other small bets - details soon! 🚀

Coolify won't be a side project, but THE project after two years. I never thought this day would come this soon.

I want to send a huge THANK you to you because without you, I won't be here today. All the help, love, and support you sent over different channels helped me a lot and made me super motivated!

So many people asked this: Is it financially sustainable?
It is not, but I see its potential (it does not need too much to be one, tbh).

If you are a user and see its benefit or you would like to support my journey, I would highly appreciate it if you could help me to reach that point by contributing over OpenCollective.

Thank you very much for all the support!

(ps: I'm almost finished with the third version of Coolify that will open up a LOT of windows for integrations and new features, so be sure to follow me on Twitter or join our community Discord channel. Links below)


Happy coding & have a nice day!

Hey, Andras here! 👋

First, thank you for subscribing to my newsletter! It means and encourages me a lot! This is the first issue, and I had never sent out a newsletter before - excited!

Coolify

Some of you were subscribed when the first version of Coolify came out. It was a long time ago! Since then, lots of things have changed, especially with Coolify.

Today, I'm launching the next version on Product Hunt! I have rewritten it from scratch and left behind all the restrictions:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/coolify

coolLabs Fonts

If you heard about the recent GDPR issues of Google Fonts, you are in a good place. I've made a privacy-friendly drop-in replacement in a few hours.

It's free, GDPR-compliant (as it's not logging anything), open-sourced, and as fast as Google Fonts! Sounds exciting? Give it a try.

https://fonts.coollabs.io

Happy coding & have a nice day!