How are you different from Vercel, Heroku, Railway, or Render?
Vercel, Heroku, Railway, and Render run your apps on their infrastructure. DollarDeploy runs your apps on your servers. That single difference changes everything.
The core difference
With platforms like Vercel or Render, you deploy to provider-operated infrastructure and pay by that provider's billing model, per request, per function, per service, per seat, or per resource. The model differs by provider, but in every case the compute is theirs and the meter is theirs.
DollarDeploy is a control plane, not a hosting platform. We build and deploy your apps to servers you own. You get fixed monthly costs, full SSH access, and infrastructure portability: the server is yours, so your apps and data can move with you.
Three ways to run an app
- Managed PaaS (Vercel, Railway, Render, Heroku): the provider operates the control plane and the compute.
- DollarDeploy: we operate the control plane; you control the compute.
- Self-hosted PaaS (Coolify, Dokploy): you operate the control plane and the compute.
DollarDeploy is the middle option, the managed experience of a PaaS on infrastructure you own, without running the control plane yourself.
What makes DollarDeploy different
- Hosted control plane operated by us, so you don't maintain it.
- Customer-controlled compute: your app runs on a server in your own provider account.
- Control plane off your server: it does not run on your application server.
- Off-server native builds: native builds run on our build infrastructure, so they don't consume your app server's CPU and RAM.
- Native systemd runtime: no required container layer.
- Docker Compose optional: available when an app actually needs containers.
What we handle for you
Server configuration done right
When you connect a server, we configure it properly:
- Systemd services — Your app runs as a native process with automatic restarts, not inside containers
- Security hardening — Firewall (UFW), fail2ban, proper file permissions
- Security headers — XSS protection, content security policies, HSTS configured out of the box
- Log rotation — 30 days of logs, compressed, with automatic cleanup
- Resource limits — Memory and file descriptor limits to prevent runaway processes
Nginx reverse proxy configured correctly
We set up Nginx with best practices you'd otherwise spend hours researching:
- Automatic HTTPS — Let's Encrypt certificates, auto-renewal
- HTTP/2 — Enabled by default for better performance
- Gzip compression — Smaller payloads, faster loads
- Proper timeouts — Tuned for real-world traffic patterns
- WebSocket support — Works out of the box for real-time apps
- Custom domains — Add as many as you need, SSL included
Managed services in one click
Need a database? Don't set up a separate managed database service. We install and configure it directly on your server:
- PostgreSQL — World's most popular SQL database, connection string auto-injected
- Redis — In-memory caching and queues
- MongoDB — Document database for flexible schemas
- MariaDB — MySQL-compatible database
One click. No separate billing. The database runs on the same server as your app, which removes the network hop to an external database service (local, not literally zero latency). Your data stays on your server.
Backups that actually work
One-click and scheduled backups to any S3-compatible storage. We back up your databases, app files, and Docker volumes.
How the platforms compare
The point below is not that these platforms lack features. It is that they meter provider compute, while DollarDeploy gives you provisioned server capacity you control.
Vercel
Vercel runs your app on Vercel's managed infrastructure. With Fluid Compute it meters resources such as active CPU time, provisioned memory, invocations, requests and data transfer, and scales automatically. DollarDeploy runs your app as a persistent process on a server you provision, so you pay for a known amount of capacity and use it as much as that server allows. The distinction is metered platform resources vs provisioned server capacity, and it is why a traffic spike raises a Vercel bill but slows, rather than bills, a fixed server.
Railway
Railway runs applications and databases on its managed infrastructure and bills by consumption, roughly RAM at ~$10/GB/month, CPU at ~$20/vCPU/month, egress at ~$0.05/GB and volume storage at ~$0.15/GB/month. Always-on services, a web app, API, PostgreSQL, Redis and a background worker, each consume metered RAM and CPU continuously. On DollarDeploy those services share the CPU and RAM of one VPS you already pay for. Metered resources vs shared VPS capacity.
Render
Render is a managed PaaS with per-service pricing: each web service, worker, cron job and managed database is its own priced instance, with bandwidth and build minutes metered on top. DollarDeploy runs multiple apps and services on one server you own, sharing its capacity, so adding another service uses spare capacity rather than adding another priced instance.
Heroku
Heroku runs your app in dynos on its infrastructure, priced per dyno, with always-on dynos costing more and add-ons billed separately. There is no SSH into the underlying host. DollarDeploy gives you the server itself: full SSH access, persistent processes, and databases installed on the same machine.
What you keep
- Full SSH access — Debug, inspect, modify anything
- Infrastructure portability — The server is yours; move to any provider, and your apps and data come with you
- Your data — On infrastructure you control, export everything
- Fixed costs — Server + DollarDeploy subscription, a predictable monthly bill
The trade-off
DollarDeploy is not fully managed hosting. Because the server is yours, you handle capacity planning and keep some infrastructure responsibility: security, capacity, disaster recovery, and provider outages do not disappear. You trade that for ownership, predictable cost, and control.
The bottom line
Managed platforms run your app on their compute and bill by their meter; running a server yourself is cheaper and portable but you assemble the operations. DollarDeploy gives you both: the managed deployment experience of a PaaS, on a server you own and can walk away with.