When Netlify killed my free tier: a 15-minute migration to Dokploy

the €3 solution

the 15-minute panic deploy

what surprised me

the catch

one month later

the real lesson

related posts Late night. Got this email: "[Netlify] Your projects have been suspended due to credit limit exceeded." Netlify moved legacy free tier users to their new 300-credit plan. I burned through it in a week. New option: $9/month for 1000 credits, or figure something else out. I had 15 minutes before my girlfriend woke up. Here's what happened. Hetzner CX22: 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD. €3.29/month. I'd been watching this Dokploy video the week before. Perfect timing. Minutes 0-5: Spun up Hetzner in Helsinki. Got the IP. Updated DNS. Minutes 5-8: SSH'd in, ran the Dokploy installer: One command. Dokploy installed Docker, Traefik, PostgreSQL, everything. Minutes 8-12: Connected Git repos. Dokploy makes this ridiculously easy - paste GitHub URL, select branch, done. Minutes 12-15: Hit deploy on all 5 projects. Watched them come back to life. The Fiance woke up. dilharia.love was live. Crisis averted. SSL just works. Traefik + Let's Encrypt provision certificates automatically. I'm running Cloudflare Full (Strict) mode - zero warnings. WWW redirects? One checkbox. Netlify charged extra for this. Logs and monitoring built-in. No Datadog bill. No "$500/month observability platform." You own the ops. Server goes down? That's on you. No 99.9% SLA. You handle security: OS updates, SSH keys, backups. I run apt upgrade weekly and backup to Backblaze B2 for $0.50/month. For personal projects? Worth it. For business-critical stuff? Pay for managed services. Server load: 8% CPU. Zero downtime. SSL renewals automatic. All 5 sites running smoothly: linkedintel.ai pulling data, sachin.cool looking sharp, dilharia.love collecting RSVPs. Deployed 3 more projects since then. No credit anxiety. No surprise bills. Total maintenance time: 10 minutes/week. Best infrastructure decision I've made this year. Free tiers aren't free. They're bait. Platforms give you free hosting to lock you in. Make migration painful. Then change pricing when you're invested. Netlify's legacy free tier was generous. But businesses change. VCs want returns. Free tiers disappear. Owning your infrastructure: predictable costs, no surprises, freedom to experiment. More work? Yes. Worth it for personal projects? Absolutely. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse