Why Pier
Pick Pier if
Section titled “Pick Pier if”- You are running on a small VPS — 512 MB to 2 GB of RAM — and want every megabyte available for the apps you deploy.
- You want a single binary with embedded assets, embedded SQLite, and a single systemd unit to manage.
- You prefer Rust’s memory model and static binaries to a PHP/Node runtime with 6+ support containers.
- You want the workflow of Coolify or Heroku without their infrastructure footprint.
Pick Coolify if
Section titled “Pick Coolify if”- You need the depth of Coolify’s feature set today — preview deployments, team roles, tunnels, destination management. Pier is catching up but is younger.
- You want Laravel-based customization or a larger ecosystem of third-party integrations.
- Your servers are already large enough that RAM and disk are not scarce.
The numbers
Section titled “The numbers”| Coolify | Pier | |
|---|---|---|
| Idle RAM | 750 MB – 1.2 GB | 20–40 MB (+Traefik) |
| Disk footprint | ~1 GB | ~15–30 MB |
| Support containers | 6+ | 1 binary + Traefik |
| Minimum VPS | 2 GB RAM, 2 vCPU | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU |
| Database | External PostgreSQL | Embedded SQLite |
| Language | PHP / Laravel | Rust |
| Frontend JS | ~300 KB+ | ~30 KB (HTMX + Alpine.js) |
What Pier does not try to be
Section titled “What Pier does not try to be”- Pier is not a Kubernetes distribution. It manages Docker on one or more servers, not a cluster scheduler.
- Pier is not a serverless platform. Workloads are long-running containers.
- Pier is not a multi-tenant SaaS. Every Pier instance is for a single team or individual.