What is self hosting?
Learn about self hosting, popular self hosted services, pros and cons, and whether self hosting is for you.
Overview
Self hosting, in this context, simply means YOU providing services as opposed to relying on a 3rd party. Providing the services yourself (aka self host) typically involves downloading, installing, and maintaining open source software on hardware you own (ex. Docker container on a Raspberry Pi) but sometimes on hardware your don't (ex. AWS EC2 instance). So why would I want to do that? Let's find out.
Examples
You can pretty much host anything you can think of. Let's take a look at a few examples.
3rd Party Equivalents
Here are some popular 3rd party services and their self hosted equivalents:
| Category | Non-Self Hosted | Self Hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Home Automation | Google Home, Apple Homekit | Home Assistant |
| Version Control | Github | Gitea |
| Team Communications | Slack, Teams | Mattermost |
| File Hosting | Dropbox, Google Drive | Owncloud |
| Password Management | LastPass, 1Password | VaultWarden |
| Surveillance | Blue Iris, Ring Video, Google Nest | Frigate |
Unique Solutions
Not only does self hosting give you alternatives to popular 3rd party services, but also the opportunity to try some unique solutions:
| Solution | Description |
|---|---|
| Tube Archivist | A self hosted YouTube media server |
| dizqueTV | Create live TV channels from your own media |
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Privacy | Maintenance & Support |
| Control | Risk |
| Flexibility | Availability, Reliability, and Scalability |
| Independence | Infrastructure |
| Cost | Cost |
| Learning | Data/Disaster Recovery |
The benefits of self hosting include:
- keeping your data private - free frying prying eyes, telemtry, leaks, etc
- having complete control (software, addons, customizations, hardware, maintenance windows, etc)
- being free from vendor lock in
- savings from perpetual costs (ex. $9.99 / month for Dropbox)
- learning about containerization, security, etc
While the disadvantages to self hosting include:
- time spent manage, maintain, secure, etc
- risk of security breaches, service disruptions, outages, etc
- in comparison to hosted solutions, you'll have reduced availability, reliability, and scalability
- need high speed internet (particularly upload), hosting hardware, reliable power, potential cooing, etc
- increased power and cooling costs may outweight any slef hosting savings
- need to survive data loss (ex. drive failure, fire, theft, etc)
Conclusion
So should you self host? My recommendation is to review the pros and cons (ex. do you have the time, skills, desire, and temperment to setup, run, and troubleshoot solutions) - if you're leaning towards "yes", start small and see if its something for you. And then after that... just do it, self hosting is great.
And if you want to learn more about my self hosted envrionment, check out my repo.