# When Netlify Killed My Free Tier: A 15-Minute Migration to Dokploy
Late night. Got this email: "[Netlify] Your projects have been suspended due to credit limit exceeded."
Five sites down:
- linkedintel.ai (LinkedIn Sales Intelligence AI for SDR's)
- sachin.cool (rookie website from college time)
- dilharia.love (wedding RSVP site - yes, judge me)
- My personal blog
- A ex-ceo's landing page
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.
The €3 Solution
Hetzner CX23: 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD. €2.99/month.
Math was simple:
- Netlify: $108/year for credit anxiety
- Dokploy + Hetzner: $42/year for unlimited deploys
I'd been watching this Dokploy video the week before. Perfect timing.
The 15-Minute Panic Deploy
- Minutes 0-5*: Spun up Hetzner in Helsinki. Got the IP. Updated DNS.
- Minutes 5-8*: SSH'd in, ran the Dokploy installer:
curl -sSL https://dokploy.com/install.sh | shOne 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.
What Surprised Me
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."
The Catch
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.
One Month Later
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.
The Real Lesson
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.