Running and maintain and own server or similar infrastructure was long a tech only privilege as it requires sysadmin know how. With the rise of PaaS services it got much easier to get a product or application shipped. There evolved a new trend of self hosting applications or services rather then buy access from a SaaS provider. In this brief tutorial I show you how to get a self hosted version of the currently super popular AI & automation tool n8n set up on your own hosted server.
What is coolify?
Coolify is a PaaS (platform as a service) platform that can run on your own server environment and lets you manage apps, services, databases and even a set of host servers to run your stuff. It is a free self hosted version of popular platforms like Vercel, netlify or also amazon AWS. With those sort of tools you get an user friendly admin interface to manage your services without the need of logging into a console and doing sysadmin task/commands manually. It is in my opinion a very good alternative for non super tech people to get products shipped.
What is n8n?
If you did not heard about n8n you are probably outside of the big AI bubble happening at the moment. It is super popular at the moment and lets you easily build AI agents and other workflow automation. It is open source and besides their cloud offering (free + paid plan) it is also available for self hosting the application. Coolify has a pre-configured service template for n8n so it is just a mather of clicks to get it set up and running without complicated sysadmin work to do. And if you are like me situated in Europa you can host it GDPR compliant in Europe.
Hosting
As a hosting provider, as I am situated in Europe, I chose an European one: hetzner.de. The company is very reliable and has a long history of data center management. I have used their servers over the last 20 years in almost all of my agencies I worked for. And they have a very nice feature which makes it really easy for non-tech people to set up coolify: they provide a bundled image with the tool.
Setup the server and n8n app
Create a new server in the hetzner console (you have to register up-front for a new account if you don’t have one):
Then choose from the Apps tab the Coolify App. It would be also possible if you install a docker environment but this makes it much more easier.
when choosing a server some say n8n runs already with less powerful server with 4GB of RAM. I choose for my instance an Intel variant with 8GB RAM as I also run other apps on the server.
Wait until the server is ready and then access the coolfiy admin panel. Inside coolify create a new project:
then add a service and choose the n8n variant with the dedicated database:
in the settings of the n8n service you can then change the URL:
having done that you can click the “Deploy” button and see the software get installed.
To upgrade your n8n instance (which is required quite often as it is in heavy development right now) simply stop the service/container and re-deploy it and it automatically pulls the latest version of the software
Whats more…
coolfiy has much more to offer as just to install n8n. I just took it as an example as everyone is going crazy about that tool and wants to build AI agents with it. I wanted to outline a cost effective way to have it also GDPR compliant hosted in Europe.
There are many other AI related apps you can simple one-click deploy: ollama, flowise, anythingllm, langfuse and many more.
Of course you can also host your wordpress or drupal website with coolify or you own developed (aka now vibe coded) apps via github repository.
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