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.
For Example
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.
Useful Lists
I'm paying a cheap VPS for stuff that I want to be 100% available. Like vaultwarden and Authentik for example.
But services, hmm let me see. Does Netflix count as I have plex? Nvm I pay both monthly, did not buy the plex lifetime pass yet. But for Netflix I recently switched my payment to turkey via vpn. Price is less than 1/3rd now.
Sneakemail. Just paid the $36 for my 10th year. Great having a fully unique, obfuscated, and permanent email for everyone you communicate with that you can also send from.
As with all email, I'm vested so switching is a burden. But this may be the year.
The domain is being rejected more often lately, so I can't use it to create accounts like I used to. Competitors like SimpleLogin/ProtonPass alias offer more for less ($30/year or bundled), but what if they end up suffering the same fate?
Google Photos. We pay for 2TB and have all the family member slots loaded up. It's perfect because my parents and my in-laws all use Android phones.
I pay for bitwarden because it's so cheap, and yet I love what they offer. It's able to be selfhosted, which is why I'm willing to trust it. The service I pay for is protonvpn. I need a vpn just for a few generic things like bypassing locked down networks that prevent me from using ssh, and I trust protonvpn enough to use it for smth like that.
Bitwarden, Paid addy.io, protonmail paid via crypto, privacy.com virtual credit cards, MySudo voip numbers, a jmp.chat number or two.
Bitwarden and Email.
I trust a company like Bitwarden to handle uptime of my password manager more than I do myself. If most of my selfhosted services went down, I'm gonna be a little annoyed, but I can survive. If Bitwarden goes down, that's a real PITA.
And email, because f**k trying to self host email successfully, I've accepted I'll just have to use a commercial provider for emails. I'll try and set up a self hosted server at some point, but on a separate domain and most likely just to mess around/learn.
Proton Mail ($5ish a month for me?), Jira/Conflience (free), and password manager.
Bitwarden is 100% worth the $10 a year. And is independant of my selfhosting dickery.
Plex and a VPN are a lot cheaper than streaming services these days.