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The platform part, without the Kubernetes part.
Docker Swarm is far simpler to run than Kubernetes, and does less. Coswarm adds what Swarm leaves to you. Here is the honest picture.
| Topic | Coswarm | Kubernetes | Docker Swarm alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting started | One line, a few questions | A cluster, an ingress, cert-manager, a dashboard… | docker swarm init, then the CLI |
| What you learn | Apps, domains, projects | Pods, deployments, services, ingress, CRDs | Stacks and the Docker CLI |
| Web panel | Built in | Add-ons | None |
| HTTPS | Automatic, Let’s Encrypt | cert-manager | Up to you |
| Web application firewall | Per domain, OWASP CRS | Add-on | Up to you |
| Databases in the browser | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis | Separate tools | Separate tools |
| Approvals and audit | Four-eyes areas, activity log | GitOps, admission policies | None |
| AI assistant | Cosmo, every change approved | — | — |
| Autoscaling | Not yet: replicas by hand | Horizontal and vertical | No |
| Built for | A few servers to a mid-size fleet | Large fleets and many teams | Small setups run by hand |
Choose Coswarm when
- You run a few servers, or a few dozen, and want them to feel like a platform.
- Your team ships containers and would rather not run Kubernetes to do it.
- You want HTTPS, a firewall and a database tool without assembling them.
- You want an assistant that can explain an outage, and changes that wait for a yes.
Choose Kubernetes when
- You need autoscaling on load today; Coswarm scales by replica count you set.
- You run large fleets with many teams and want its ecosystem of operators.
- You build from source on the platform itself; Coswarm deploys images built in your CI.
- Your organisation has already standardised on it.
Already on Swarm?
Bring what you run.
Install Coswarm on a manager node and Swarm Sync finds the services already running there. Adopting them only creates a record in the panel; nothing restarts. From then on they have logs, domains, history and Cosmo like everything else.
Your servers are waiting.
One command, a minute or so, and the panel is on your domain. Free, and yours to keep.
curl -fsSL https://coswarm.dev/install.sh | bash