Most developers ship great products and then write documentation that drives users away.

No clear setup guide. No code examples. No API reference. Just confusion and users move on before they even give your product a chance.

I'm Kelechi a Technical Writer and Cybersecurity Analyst based in Lagos. I help SaaS founders and developers turn incomplete, messy docs into clean professional references that actually help users succeed.

What I deliver: 📡 REST API Documentation 🔐 SDK & Library Guides 📄 GitHub READMEs 📊 Product User Guides 🛡️ Security SOPs & Process Docs

What makes me different I actually understand the technology I write about. With a background in cybersecurity and system administration, I don't just write about your product. I understand it deeply.

Fast turnaround. Flat rate pricing. Free sample on every first project zero risk on your end.

🌐 bishopasonye.vercel.app 📁 bishopasonye.github.io/Portfolio

DM me and let's get your documentation sorted.

Introduction

In the first method, we coupled all of the services into one stack using a single Docker Compose file. The network between all services was created automatically, and we didn't have to start them up individually — which removes the risk of a race condition if service startup isn't handled properly.

If you're running a single app, that's genuinely the recommended way to set up Directus on a Coolify-managed VPS. Going in, I assumed there were several good reasons to split the services apart instead — more control over backups, monitoring, restarts, that kind of thing. So before recommending decoupling, I actually tested each of those assumptions on a live Coolify instance.

Most of them turned out to be wrong.

Myth 1: Restarting Directus Restarts the Whole Stack

I expected that restarting Directus inside the bundled Compose file would restart Redis and Postgres along with it. It doesn't. Coolify lets you restart each service in the stack independently — Directus, Database, and Cache each get their own Restart button, right there in the same view. No decoupling needed for this one.

Myth 2: You Need a Separate Database Resource for S3 Backups

Same story. Even with Postgres bundled inside the Directus Compose file, Coolify still gives it its own dedicated Backups option, S3 included. This isn't a separate-resource-only feature.

Myth 3: Scheduled Tasks Require Separate Services

Also not true. Coolify exposes a Scheduled Tasks tab per service, even inside a single bundled stack — complete with a Container name dropdown letting you target the cron job at just the database, or just Directus, without splitting anything apart.

What Actually Holds Up

Two things survived testing.

First: metrics. This one's confirmed directly in Coolify's own documentation — CPU and memory metrics collection is explicitly not available for Docker Compose–based deployments. If you want to see per-container resource usage through Coolify's built-in monitoring, the service needs to be created as its own standalone resource, not bundled inside a Compose file. This is a real, documented limitation of the bundled approach.

Second: sharing a database across multiple apps. This one isn't a Coolify feature at all — it's just how Docker networking works. A database defined inside one app's Compose file lives on that stack's own private network by default. A second, completely separate application can't reach it without deliberately bridging the two networks. If you've got a desktop app and a mobile app that both need to talk to the same Postgres instance, that database needs to exist as its own standalone resource from the start — it can't stay tucked inside one app's Compose file.

So this really comes down to two reasons to decouple, not five — one a genuine Coolify limitation, the other a structural fact about Docker networking. Let's set both of those up properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cMrbfGZqb8