A self-hosted PaaS sounds like the obvious fix to a marked-up Heroku bill. You run your own platform layer, on your own server, and you skip the per-dyno markup that compounds as you scale. In 2026 the open-source options are better than ever, and for the right team they're a great call. For the wrong team they quietly become a second job. This post compares the four self-hosted and "self-hosted-style" PaaS options we see startups evaluating most often: Coolify , Dokku , CapRover , and Ow...