An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is a self-service layer that streamlines application delivery by providing developers with standardized tools and workflows for building, deploying, and managing software. It abstracts infrastructure complexity, enforces best practices, and integrates CI/CD, environments, databases, and monitoring—empowering teams to ship faster while ensuring security, consistency, and operational control.
This article compares CapRover, Coolify, and Dokploy as self-hosted PaaS options. Through hands-on testing, it highlights strengths, weaknesses, and trade-offs to help teams choose the right platform for deploying and managing applications efficiently.
