Aiploy vs Heroku, Railway, Fly.io, Coolify and Dokku
An honest side-by-side for deploying Go apps — including the rows where the others win.
| Feature | Aiploy | Heroku | Railway | Fly.io | Coolify | Dokku |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads your dependencies to configure | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| Databases detected from your code | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| No Dockerfile needed | yes | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
| Fully managed (no server to run) | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no |
| CLI-first | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes |
| Custom domains + automatic HTTPS | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Managed DB backups + restore | yes | add-on | add-on | add-on | no | no |
| Entry price | $2/mo | $5/mo | usage | usage | free | free |
| Free tier | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Languages beyond Go | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Team / org features | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no |
Where we win
Several of these will build a Go app without a Dockerfile, and most will run a
database for you if you go and add one. None of them works out which
databases your app needs. Aiploy reads your dependencies, sees PostgreSQL, MySQL or
Redis, provisions them next to your app and wires the connection strings in — no
dashboard step, no service definition. It writes the Dockerfile too: CGO detected,
port inferred, multi-stage build. You run aiploy deploy and nothing
else.
Coolify and Dokku are excellent free software, but you operate them: you rent the box, patch it, debug the reverse proxy, and build your own backup story. Aiploy is managed, with automatic database backups and restore on every plan. That is the trade — you pay us instead of paying attention.
Where they win
Aiploy is Go-only. If you deploy Node, Python or Rust, every other option here beats us and we would rather say so than waste your afternoon.
There is no free tier. You get 7 days free with a card, then $2/mo. Railway, Fly.io, Coolify and Dokku all have a genuinely free path and we do not. We would rather charge $2 than run a free tier we cannot afford to keep online.
There are no team or organization features yet — Aiploy assumes one developer and one account. And Heroku, Railway and Fly.io all operate at a scale and with a regional footprint that a single-operator platform does not match.
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