PreviewDrop vs Coolify
Managed previews vs managing your own server
Coolify is open-source and free to self-host. You own the server and the ops. PreviewDrop is $19/mo managed — zero infrastructure to maintain.
TL;DR
Coolify is free in licensing. The real cost is provisioning the server, applying security patches, handling storage, and responding to incidents. PreviewDrop is managed infrastructure — we run the containers, scale the cluster, handle the DNS, and deal with infrastructure incidents. The cost is $19/month. The operations cost is zero.
Feature-by-feature
| Feature | PreviewDrop | Coolify |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | $19/mo Starter | $0 (open-source) |
| Infrastructure cost | Included | VPS: ~$5–20/mo (e.g. Hetzner CX21) |
| Operations cost | $0 — we run it | Your time: updates, monitoring, incidents |
| No maintenance required | You own the ops | |
| Scales automatically | You provision more capacity | |
| PR preview environments | ||
| Auto-expiring TTL | 1–168 hours by plan | Configurable but manual |
| PR comment with preview URL | ||
| Password-protected previews | ||
| QR code per preview | ||
| Zero-config CLI setup | npx tsx https://previewdrop.dev/setup.ts | Requires server config |
| Open-source | ||
| Data on your servers | ||
| Automatic updates | Your responsibility | |
| Incident response | Our team | Your team |
Comparison last verified April 2026. Pricing and feature details change — for current numbers check Coolify's own pricing page.
What's actually different
The real cost of self-hosting
Coolify's licensing is free. The infrastructure and operational costs are real: a VPS costs $5–20/month, and someone on your team needs to apply patches, monitor uptime, and handle incidents. A 2am server outage is your incident, not a vendor's. If your time is worth $50/hr, the break-even for a 5-person team is just 0.18 hours of ops overhead per month. Most teams exceed that.
When Coolify legitimately wins
Coolify is the right choice when data residency is a hard requirement — "no data leaves our servers" — and you have the infrastructure knowledge to run it reliably. If you're already running a personal VPS and want preview environments as one of several hosted services, the marginal cost of adding Coolify is near zero.
Managed vs self-managed
PreviewDrop is for teams that want preview environments without owning a server. The $19/month buys you the absence of infrastructure operations, not just the feature. Connect your repo, push code — we handle the rest. No Kubernetes sprint, no YAML manifests, no capacity planning tickets.
Migrating from Coolify
Your Docker configuration works identically — both tools build from your Dockerfile. Export your environment variables from Coolify's dashboard, then run
npx tsx https://previewdrop.dev/setup.ts in your project root. Add PREVIEWDROP_TOKEN to your repo secrets, push a branch, and verify the preview URL works.See the numbers
Full plan limits and pricing on the Pricing page. Setup walkthrough in the Quickstart docs.Try PreviewDrop free
Connect a repo, push a branch, get a preview URL. No credit card, no trial clock.
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