Introduction

TL;DR

Pier is an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Coolify, Heroku, and Vercel. It packages container management, Docker Compose, reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS, Git-to-deploy, service templates, and backups into a single ~15 MB Rust binary that uses 20–40 MB of RAM at idle.

What you get

• Containers & stacks — create, start, stop, restart, remove. Deploy any Docker Compose file with a built-in YAML editor.
• One-click templates — 30+ curated services: PostgreSQL, Redis, Grafana, Gitea, Supabase, Matrix, Minecraft, and more.
• Git to deploy — GitHub and GitLab webhooks. Build from a Dockerfile, a Docker image, or a Compose file.
• Reverse proxy with HTTPS — Traefik + Let’s Encrypt, auto-provisioned per service domain.
• Multi-server — manage remote servers through lightweight Pier agents.
• Scheduled backups — back up volumes and databases to any S3-compatible bucket.
• Self-update — check for new builds from the UI, atomic binary swap with rollback.

Why another PaaS?

Coolify is excellent — the reason Pier exists is not to replace it, but to serve a different constraint. Coolify’s Laravel/PHP stack runs 6+ containers (Laravel, PostgreSQL, Redis, Soketi, Horizon, Traefik) and uses 750 MB–1.2 GB of RAM before you deploy your first app. That rules out $5/month VPS hosts for serious use.

Pier delivers the same core workflow from a single Rust binary using 20–40 MB of RAM. You can run it on a 512 MB VPS and still have room for three or four real apps.

Next steps

1. Install Pier on any Ubuntu or Debian server with Docker.
2. Deploy your first service from the dashboard.
3. Read the architecture overview to understand how Pier is wired internally.