Overview

You picked Hetzner (or DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode) because it's cheap. $5/mo for a server is hard to beat. But you're also the sysadmin — security patches, nginx config, SSL renewals, database backups, Docker updates, disk monitoring, and 2am outage alerts are all on you.

RaidFrame gives you the same price point with zero ops.

What You're Currently Managing

On a typical VPS setup:

Task	Frequency	Your Time
OS security patches	Weekly	30 min
Docker engine updates	Monthly	15 min
SSL certificate renewal	Every 90 days	15 min (if certbot breaks, 2 hours)
Nginx configuration	Per deploy	20 min
Database backups	Daily (if automated)	Setup: 2 hrs, monitor: 30 min/mo
Disk space monitoring	Ongoing	15 min/incident
Firewall / fail2ban	Setup + maintain	1 hr setup, 15 min/mo
Log rotation	Setup	30 min
Server migration (upgrade)	Yearly	4-8 hours
Debugging downtime	When it happens	1-4 hours

Estimated: 10-20 hours/month. At $50/hr, that's $500-1000/month in hidden costs on your "$5 server."

Step 1: Install the CLI

curl -fsSL https://get.raidframe.com | sh
rf auth login

Step 2: Import from Docker Compose

Most VPS setups use Docker Compose:

rf init --from docker-compose

If you're not using Docker Compose, create a raidframe.yaml manually:

services:
  web:
    type: web
    build:
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    port: 3000
    scaling:
      min: 1
      max: 5

databases:
  main:
    engine: postgres
    version: "16"
  cache:
    engine: redis

Step 3: Migrate Data

Database

# SSH into your VPS and export
ssh root@your-vps "docker exec postgres pg_dump -U postgres mydb" > backup.sql

# Import to RaidFrame
rf add postgres
rf db import main backup.sql

Files / Uploads

# Download from VPS
scp -r root@your-vps:/data/uploads ./uploads

# Upload to RaidFrame storage
rf add storage
rf storage sync ./uploads/ s3://my-app-uploads/

Environment Variables

# Copy .env from VPS
scp root@your-vps:/app/.env ./.env

# Push to RaidFrame
rf env push

Step 4: Deploy

rf deploy

Step 5: Point DNS

rf domains add myapp.com

Update your DNS A record from your VPS IP to RaidFrame. Once propagated, decommission the VPS.

VPS → RaidFrame Comparison

	Hetzner VPS	RaidFrame
Price	$5-20/mo	$7-25/mo
SSL	Manual (certbot)	Automatic
Backups	Manual (cron + pg_dump)	Automatic (daily, 30-day retention)
Scaling	Manual (bigger server)	Automatic (horizontal)
Zero-downtime deploy	Manual (blue/green script)	Built-in
Monitoring	Manual (set up Grafana)	Built-in
Log aggregation	Manual (Loki/ELK)	Built-in
Firewall	Manual (ufw/iptables)	Built-in
DDoS protection	None	Built-in
OS patches	Manual	Not your problem
Docker updates	Manual	Not your problem
Disk space	Monitor manually	Auto-scaled
Multi-region	Run multiple VPS	`rf regions add`
Preview environments	Not practical	Automatic per PR
CI/CD	Set up yourself	Built-in
Recovery from failure	SSH in and debug	Auto-restart + rollback

Keep Your Dockerfile

Your existing Dockerfile works on RaidFrame with zero changes. If you were running:

docker compose up -d

You now run:

rf deploy

Same container, managed infrastructure.

What About Coolify / Dokploy?

If you're using Coolify or Dokploy on your VPS to get a PaaS-like experience — those are great tools. But you're still responsible for the underlying server. When Hetzner has a network issue, or your disk fills up, or the Docker daemon crashes at 3am — that's on you.

On RaidFrame, infrastructure is our problem. You write code. We run it.

Decommission Your VPS

Once everything is verified on RaidFrame:

# Final backup (just in case)
ssh root@your-vps "tar czf /tmp/full-backup.tar.gz /data"
scp root@your-vps:/tmp/full-backup.tar.gz ./vps-backup.tar.gz

# Cancel Hetzner server
# (do this through the Hetzner dashboard)

Migrate from Hetzner / VPS