Devilbox vs Kool

Devilbox is a Dockerized LAMP and MEAN stack for local development on Linux, macOS, and Windows hosts. It supports an unlimited number of projects: adding a project directory creates a virtual host without restarting services. New projects get SSL certificates signed by Devilbox's certificate authority, and its built-in wildcard DNS makes project addresses available to the host system.

The stack supports Apache or Nginx with PHP, plus services such as MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, and MongoDB. Configuration can be set globally, by service version, or for a specific project. Its intranet includes phpMyAdmin, phpPgAdmin, phpRedMin, Adminer, OpcacheGui, and a GUI for viewing sent emails. Outgoing project email is intercepted and stored locally for review. After the required Docker images are first downloaded, Devilbox can run offline. Its documentation says official Docker images are built nightly and published with available security patches. The free plan is listed at free, with no price or usage limits stated on the opened pages.

Kool.dev Cloud is a platform-as-a-service for deploying containerized web applications, either on managed hosting or infrastructure a team provides. Deployments can start with a Git push, trigger automatic builds, create preview environments for pull requests, and avoid downtime. Kool supports Docker Compose compatibility and existing Compose setups. For bring-your-own-cloud deployments, it installs Kubernetes using k0s on a VPS with SSH access; named providers include DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, Vultr, OVH, and Linode, and Kool says any VPS with SSH can be used. Managed database options include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch. Monitoring includes Prometheus and one-click Grafana dashboards. Listed security features include automated hardening, network isolation, secrets management, SSH key authentication, cluster activity logs, and credentials encrypted at rest. Plans include BYOC Free, managed cloud plans from $5.00 per month, and BYOC Pro at $49.00 per month. The BYOC Free tier is limited to one cluster, one node, one environment, and one app; a valid credit card is required after seven days. Kool lists documentation, community Discord, and email support for all plans, with priority support for Pro and Team.