Dora Noda
Software Engineer
2333 posts · View all authors
Buildpacks vs the Self-Hosted PaaS Pack: Why Coolify, Dokploy, and Kubero All Default to Heroku's git-push Instead of Cloud Native Buildpacks
Heroku co-created the Cloud Native Buildpacks standard in 2018. In 2026, the leading self-hosted PaaS tools still don't default to it — and two of them support it anyway, just not by default. Here's the actual build layer under each tool's hood.
Chaos Mesh vs LitmusChaos: Which One Actually Fits Breaking Your Own Fleet on Purpose
Chaos Mesh runs a privileged daemon on every node; LitmusChaos spins up a disposable pod per experiment. A concrete look at which one actually proves a self-hosted, multi-tenant Cluster API fleet survives a node loss, a network partition, and an etcd disk going slow — without taking down a tenant's app by accident.
Coolify Shipped an MCP Server. It Still Can't Deploy Your App.
Coolify's official MCP server is strictly read-only — the write-capable 'AI deploys your app' story everyone cites comes from a third-party wrapper holding your API token. Here's the concrete tool-by-tool split, why it matters, and where bex's own MCP server stands on the same line.
Coolify's MCP Server Ships Read-Only: Dokploy Beat It to AI-Driven Deploys, and Neither Can Answer 'Is My Fleet Healthy?'
Coolify's new MCP server can't deploy anything yet — it's 10 read-only tools. Dokploy shipped a write-capable one a month earlier. Here's what both still can't tell an AI agent about a multi-node fleet.
Coolify's v5 Rewrite Has No Public Timeline a Year In: What Betting on a Small-Team PaaS's Next-Gen Core Means for Production Users
Coolify's v5 rewrite promises cloud-like multi-server scaling, but its GitHub milestone sits at 0% completion a year after the first commit. Here's what the tracker actually shows and what it means if you're running production on Coolify today.
Crossplane vs Cluster API: What a Self-Hosted PaaS Actually Needs
Crossplane can turn any cloud resource into a Kubernetes API; Cluster API already does that for machines. A concrete comparison of what each buys a self-hosted PaaS, and whether bolting Crossplane onto Cluster API solves a problem that's already solved.
Crossplane vs. Cluster API: Two Bets on 'API-First Infrastructure' (and the One a Git-Push PaaS Should Make)
Crossplane and Cluster API both expose infrastructure as a Kubernetes API, but they bet on opposite things. Here's the concrete test for when a self-hosted PaaS needs Crossplane's generic composition engine, and when a hand-written CRD wins instead.
One DV Certificate Per Tenant Domain vs Wildcard TLS: The Multi-Tenant Pattern a Self-Hosted PaaS Actually Needs
Wildcard TLS stops covering anything the moment a tenant brings their own domain. Here's the concrete cert-manager and acme.sh architecture — bind-time issuance, renewal fan-out, and offboarding revocation — that replaces it, with the Let's Encrypt rate limits and 45-day certificate timeline that make it non-negotiable.
E2B vs Daytona vs Modal in 2026: Sandbox Pricing Hit Parity — Here's the Utilization Number That Decides If You Should Self-Host
E2B and Daytona both landed on the exact same $0.0504/vCPU-hour price in 2026. Here's the actual utilization percentage where running your own Hetzner sandbox fleet gets cheaper than renting theirs.