Beginner Guide to VPS Hetzner and Coolify

Summary

I set up my own VPS, documented every step, and ended up with a repeatable deployment pipeline. This is both a checklist for my future self and a guide for anyone curious about self-hosting. Along the way I'll explain why I picked Hetzner and Coolify, and how they compare with other options like DigitalOcean, AWS, Render, or Fly.io. This comprehensive checklist covers every essential step for setting up a secure, production-ready VPS. Each section includes commands, verification steps, and troubleshooting tips based on real-world experience. Pre-Setup Checklist Before You Begin: Choose your VPS provider (Hetzner recommended for price/performance) Select server specifications (minimum 1GB RAM, 20GB storage) Note down server IP address and root credentials Prepare your local machine with SSH client Have a strong password generator ready Picking the VPS provider Chose Hetzner Cloud (cheap, fast, reliable in Europe) Alternatives I considered: DigitalOcean → smoother onboarding, great docs, slightly more expensive AWS Lightsail → decent for small apps, but tied to AWS ecosystem (complex for beginners) Linode → reliable, but Hetzner wins on price/performance Render/Fly.io → easier PaaS, but more opinionated and costly at scale Why Hetzner? 2–3x cheaper for the same specs compared to DO/AWS Strong European datacenter presence (latency advantage for my use case) Transparent pricing and no surprise bills Initial Server Setup Checklist First Login and System Updates Update package lists and upgrade system apt update && apt upgrade -y Verify system information uname -a cat /etc/os-release Root Account Security - Use strong password with mixed case, numbers, symbols - Store securely in password manager Create secondary user account - Choose descriptive username (not 'admin' or 'user') - Set strong password usermod -aG sudo your-username - Should show: `your-username : your-username sudo` su - your-username sudo whoami - Should return: `root` SSH Key Authentication Setup Generat...