If you run your app on a single rented server instead of a big cloud platform, deploying a new version has traditionally meant one of two bad options: accept a few seconds of downtime while the app restarts, or adopt Kubernetes — which solves the problem, but means running a whole orchestration cluster just to get zero-downtime releases on what might be one or two boxes. Conecta and Deploy Forge both aim at the gap in between: free, open-source tools that give a plain VPS the zero-downtime deploys you'd normally need Kubernetes for. They just do it for different kinds of apps.
Conecta: built for Dockerized apps
Conecta ships as a single Docker image (built on Deno and the Docker CLI) that acts as a small control plane sitting in front of your app. It runs blue-green deployments: the new version starts up alongside the old one, Conecta runs HTTP health checks to confirm it's actually ready, then switches traffic over using its own internal authoritative DNS (it serves real A, AAAA and SRV records). Configuration is stored in SQLite, and it exposes a webhook API so any CI/CD system — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, whatever you already use — can trigger a deploy. It's explicitly designed with no vendor lock-in: bring your own container registry, reverse proxy and TLS setup.
Who it's for: developers self-hosting Dockerized apps on a VPS who want real blue-green deploys (old and new versions running side by side) without standing up Kubernetes.
Price: free and open source.
Honest limits: no auto-scaling or self-healing the way Kubernetes has. The internal DNS is one more moving part to understand, and it only makes sense for VPS self-hosting — not for teams already on managed cloud platforms.
Deploy Forge: built for traditional, non-containerized apps
Deploy Forge assumes you're not using Docker at all. It's a Bash toolkit (MIT-licensed) built around three scripts: deploy.sh copies each release into its own folder and flips a symlink to switch versions — an OS-level rename, not a file copy, so the switch is instant and never leaves a half-deployed app on disk. preflight.sh checks disk space, inode limits, file permissions, TLS certificate expiry and symlink integrity before a deploy even starts. rollback.sh restores any previous versioned release on demand, and it also rolls back automatically the moment a post-deploy health check fails. It ships with ready-made GitHub Actions workflows, Nginx config examples, systemd service templates, and a multi-stage Docker PHP-FPM image for teams who do want a container for just that one piece.
Who it's for: developers and small teams running a traditional app (PHP, Node, Python, whatever runs under systemd or Nginx) directly on a VPS over SSH, without Docker.
Price: free and open source.
Honest limits: SSH-only, with no cloud-native or multi-server orchestration. It's plain Bash, so teams unfamiliar with shell scripting will face a learning curve, and the community around it is still small.
| Feature | Conecta | Deploy Forge |
|---|---|---|
| App type | Dockerized apps | Traditional apps (PHP, Node, etc. via systemd/Nginx) |
| Mechanism | Blue-green via internal DNS + health checks | Atomic symlink swap between release folders |
| Rollback | Switch traffic back via DNS | Automatic on failed health check, or manual command |
| Trigger | Webhook API from any CI/CD | GitHub Actions workflows included |
| Extra tooling | None beyond the control plane | Preflight checks (disk, TLS, permissions) |
| Price | Free, open source | Free, open source (MIT) |
Pick Conecta if your app already runs in Docker and you want true blue-green traffic switching with health checks baked in. Pick Deploy Forge if your app runs the old-fashioned way — no containers, just files and a process manager on a VPS — and you want an instant, reversible release without adopting Docker just to get zero downtime. Neither replaces Kubernetes for a genuinely large, multi-server deployment, but for the one-or-two-VPS case both were built for, that's exactly the point.