A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.
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The main advantages for me are learning and data.
For instance, with the budgeting app (Firefly 3) I learned a lot more about banks and the data available to third parties (and myself). I also have a lot of data about my consumption behaviour and I can use excel or AI, if I want, to do clever stuff with my data and take better decisions.
*limited to outside factors like how much you actually self host and how much backup power you can store/generate.
You can host the data and/or the app that can be accessed cross-platform. If you're on someone else's PC be it linux, windows or mac you can pop open a browser and visit a url to access your app with the stored data. Or you could host the data and access it using the clients on multiple/different systems.
It’s for that hit of dopamine every time I get an application to work.
I'll add that sometimes the self-hosted version does something that the "official, paid"[1] version doesn't, or at the very least allows you to try to hack it together.
A problem with commercial offerings is that their idea of completed product is different than yours, and depending on the feature there's not enough $$$ incentive to pursue it. This is the major problem with Google, because search is such a ocean of income, that no other project will ever stand up to it.
[1] I say official because quite a few of self hosted versions are clones of some paid product.
Self hosted budget management app is like more advanced user stuff rather than the normal users would do. So hosting that kind of things might sound very weird to you, I get that.
But it is more like a tendency. Most users start their homelab with very basic services like storage management, video streaming, photos, or note taking. There is a huge steep learning curve to run all of them safely and robustly, but once you get over it and there is a wide and very flat area you literally can do anything whatever you want.
Budge management app is like that thing. Many of us wouldn't start hosting budge management app, but we will get there eventually. Because we can.
There's a number of reasons. I would guess for most people here it's really about control of their data, which is a form of privacy. Making sure it stays on their network (ie: in their control) unless they approve it to go somewhere else.
There can be financial reasons (eg: backing up 10s or hundreds of terabytes to the cloud can get expensive), practical reasons (poor Internet access, especially internationally), latency/performance reasons (home automation). Sometimes you'll also get better interoperability with selfhosted stuff since exporting data is usually trivial and there's no walled garden lockin. And that's not everything, just a few reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
But you're right that some of these are often not the case. It can easily become more expensive (depending on how you account for things), it's definitely more work & it's never as easy as "just install and app and create an account".
Finally we can't forget that a not insignificant number of people here are aspiring (or actual) sys admins. This is a GREAT way to learn the trade if that's your thing.
Because connectivity today matters, namely yes I want an "app" to work on my current device but what if I want to use on another device? Share with family, friends, colleagues or even a random stranger? Then arguably hosting the app with its data is the most logical way.
Learning by doing is the main example most people will selfhost things. For example why would you want to solve a puzzle if you can buy it ready made? Why building a statue of lego bricks and not buying the built statue? Because learning about something you like is fun and you gain experience from that which might be beneficial for your present or future job.
Also some consider data privacy more than others. With selfhosting you own your data and not the company behind it. Why should I make an account for a recipe app if I can selfhost it and not needing an account? Why sharing my private information with some random tech company?
There are a lot of things people want to accomplish by selfhosting.
Budget management app is not someone who starts with, its just oh i got a sever, i use a lot of other self hosted server, why not use a budget manager too.
Now is this better then app? of course!
now i can backup my data to 3 place
my parter dont need to install anything on there phone to see how much crap i am buying
i can automate things with n8n with my finance (i never did, but you can)
etc
> Can't you just install this type of app to your phone or pc?
The people who make that app, and host the servers that run it, they often like to get paid.
Not necessarily by you. Maybe they'll get paid by Google in exchange to allowing Google to show you ads in their app.
Maybe they sell the app, then, yeah, they're paid by you. Maybe some other thing. Like doing some statistics with everyone's data and selling the results.
Either way, they're working for you, but you're also working for them, in your own way.
Me, I work for myself. That's just how I roll. That's just how many of us roll. We enjoy the idea of being unaffected when the companies that own our services decides to hike its prices up, or punish users with an ad blocker. We like the idea that we'd be unaffected by a nuclear strike on the Silicon Valley, God forbid. We'll be sad and all, but our apps will still run.
Honestly I would say most of it’s just to do it because you can and also because you get experience in doing all these things that can translate to work. I would say I have a lot more container and virtual machine experience than majority of the people at my job and can explain it better than them.
Different reasons.
Main are availability and support for several simultaneous users.
Pi-hole, web server, media server and cloud storage only makes sense when available 24/7 for several users.
My most niche case is installing a VScode server because you can't install VScode on an Amazon Fire and I wanted to do some web design on the train. I can now access a VScode server through the browser anywhere and sync it with Git.
Typically if someone wants to self host something like that it's because they want to interact with it using a mobile app.
Without that aspect, you're correct that desktop software would be the more typical way to go.
Using the budgeting example, self hosting would be to provide something like Mint rather than something like QuickBooks.
And if you lose your phone, what happens to the data that's in that app if it doesn't sync somewhere?
Most people want services to be synced across devices. Using the budget app example, I just couldn't possibly do all of my budget tasks from my phone alone. It's too limited of a screen size and not all features are available within the app.
I killed more PCs by stupidly placing my screwdriver (2) than by static discharge (0). And I opened, build and handled like 100 PCs in my 5 years of IT
I mainly host password, private sensible data, and photos on my own home server. That's it.
For me, it is a balance between what I am trying to accomplish and the time/energy/maintenance I am willing to put into accomplishing that thing.
I used to self-host a personal website on Wordpress, but now I farm that out to a static site hosting provider because I would rather spend the time building the website instead of spending the same time maintaining the hosting.
I self-host a kubernetes homelab environment because that is a personal investment in skill that i don't want to pay exorbitant cloud prices for.
Selfhosting is a journey of motivation, frustration and learning.
Perks are: Appliable knowledge in the IT space and understanding of virtual concepts be it Software Stacks or Networking interactions, "offline" Data i.E. selfhosted and not under someone elses thumb/control/exposure
Since you have access to all data, you can basically do magic behind closed doors and reap the benefits.
Setting up a selfhosted Environment means you can pipe in offline ressources just aswell as share access to specific entities without handing the keys over to a 3rd party.
In the case of a budget management app - it's finances. Not everybody is cool with having their finances hosted in an app on a device that can crash or get stolen, we'd rather have access to it when we need and want, but still have that data when all my devices used to access it usually are gone.
i.e. when the Service Provider decides to shut down - this one aint. (shot at google)
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I've started with one ThinClient, then bought two more to cluster them up and experiment with HighAvailability and shared CEPH-Storage between the nodes for 10s Migrations of fullblown VMs.. then bought a Dell Workstation with Two Server CPUs and .. basically virtualized that ProxMox cluster within my ProxMox Baremetal Dell host.
With the knowledge i managed to gather in the last year alone, I'm able to setup a coherent Work Environment for 50+ People with reliable SSO and 2FA mechanisms, shared FAST storage with dedublication of files and continous nightly backups that get checked for validity and automatic pruning of old unneeded backups on - 1 external NAS + Cold Storage on a buddys Datacenter with 20TB of encrypted storage just for me.
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I basically have no care in the world for the data in my house at this point, since everything's backed up nightly.
I can restore from House fire by setting up a new host with ProxMox, mounting the network storage and restoring the NAS and BackupVM - then just clicking restore on everything..
Since the Services are all on a subnet that's managed virtually by a OPNSense VM and VPN is run on the ProxMox host, everything is drag and drop + Setup your own VPN Solution - if I ever want to gift someone my done work without the data, basically.
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Why do i NEED this?
To break the spiral of neccessairy skills and knowledge for 'entry level' jobs in technical positions and understanding behind security implications, proper troubleshooting, documentation and service culture i.e. there's so many technologies i'm somehwat familiar with now, that I understand what others in the buisness world need of me to properly process errors, requests, whatever.
Data is my answer most of the time. Here are some books recommendations.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Afterlives of Data
Black Box Society
Revolutionary Mathematics
For me selfhosting is all about privacy and rights on your data. If you can host it, you are responsible for the data and the only one (theoretically) able to read it.
Privacy
Because the government will use my data to train the AI overlords.
Also because i can and enjoy running my own services and infra. Helps me land a better job and expand my skills
Wait, you mean not every one runs a hypervisor at their house with 15 - 20 guest using more technology than most small businesses? 😂
Short answer, it’s just fun!
My primary purpose was to host my own music server. Have tonnes od CDs and what not and ripped them all onto a media server. This then evolved to Navidrome, then Airsonic. It's like having your own, private Spotify. More music you add, woot.
Then, I wanted my DVD/Blueray collection on a server. A simple HTTP server hosts these, and Kodi both accesses them, and offers them up via uPnP for local hosts.
Then there are backups. A small NAS for these. Samba, SFTP, FTPS and even HTTP(s) upload capabilities.
Then using the web server to host some HTML generated from say Cron, to show stats of stuff.
The a logcat server. So everything can log to a central place.
An internal mail server, so local hosts can email their logs to the central logger. Weird some can email, but not syslog.
Then some influxdb to offload metrics from routers and hosts. Then a pretty dashboard from Chronograph and what not.
Everything else after, is just gravy.
This is like asking why no speaks one language saying, " I don't understand how/why people speak different languages."
Tons of reasons, some geographical, some political to some biblical, and other just out of spite.
To answer your statement... Tons of reasons; some listed already but too many to state. I suggest you research more and it'll help you understand why.
You don't sound stupid at all!
Before switching to Actual budget, I used YNAB. Just an app to install that works on my phone and on my PC.
It's all synced to the cloud so the same data appears on both devices.
But, I'm tied to YNAB's choices. They decided to increase prices, so I had to find something else.
Instead, Actual is completely controlled by me. None of my data with anyone else, no price, no subscription, no concern that changes will be forced on me that I don't like. It's all in my control.
That's why I would rather self-host a budgeting software than just install one.
Mainly for control and privacy of our data so it doesn’t get stolen or others don’t bank off of selling our data
Short answer: accessibility, security, and privacy.
Long answer: Hosted services allow accessibility for more devices and users. If your network is properly secured and maintained, your personal network will be more secure than huge services that are well known targets with thousands of employees as potential victims of social engineering. Privacy because I don’t trust my data with third parties and cloud based services.
Some added detail on that last topic, it’s not just trust to secure my data; it’s trust to respect my data. I’ve worked as a software engineer building systems for marketing teams. I’ve worked projects to integrate with data warehousing services and social media platforms. Most people would be shocked by how much data companies have collected and correlated with you.