Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I’m your average techie millennial who saw the dotcom bubble burst and was around when many of the OG services of the internet era simply vanished. Let’s just say, watching favorites like GeoCities and Launchcast go bust was a big motivation for me to start self-hosting my most-used services as soon as I was able to. Initially, it was mostly curiosity and tinkering. That changed over time. Today, self-hosting for me is equal parts habit, convenience, and once-in-a-while stubbornness to stick with open-source solutions.
But first, what the heck is self-hosting and how is it any different from running an app on your computer? Honestly, it’s not all that different. Broadly speaking, self-hosting is all about replacing software that is traditionally associated with cloud-hosted tools with applications and services that run on your local hardware. It sounds complicated, and at first it is, but over the years you come to appreciate the freedom it gives alongside the occasional headaches it might bring. Take the bitter with the better, eh?
Do you self-host services? 58 votes Yes, most of software stack runs on a server I control. 40 % Yes, I've dabbled in the basics like a media server. 33 % No, I'm happy with cloud services. 12 % No, it's too complicated for me. 16 %
Cloud isn’t bad, self-hosting is better
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
It’s easy to presume that anyone into self-hosting is taking an anti-cloud or anti-SaaS stance. But the truth is somewhere in the middle. Self-hosting is all about maintaining control. When your files, chat history, or notes live on someone else’s servers, you’re trusting that company with managing uptime, security practices, and, generally, decisions on the future of the service. If a company like Google can shut down a service that doesn’t meet its internal targets, it is easy to see why I’d trust smaller companies even less.
Moreover, I like knowing where my data is, who can access it, and how it’s being stored. Of course, as a self-hosting veteran, I’m one of those grumpy old guys who want explicit control over apps, customization, and a micro-transaction free plan. But we’re getting into the weeds here. The fact of the matter is, I’ve spent days tweaking and customizing a media server or personal cloud service to handle an edge-case scenario that most commercial services wouldn’t touch. That’s the beauty of having control over software.
Commercial services can rarely give you the kind of customisation and flexibility that self-hosted options offer.
Privacy and security are, predictably, some of the other reasons I stick with self-hosting. It doesn’t automatically make your data safer, but the two-pronged approach of open-source apps makes it much more likely to be secure. For one, open-source apps used by thousands of nerds usually get audited and called out for poor security practices. Secondly, these apps give you the choice to roll out your own security precautions. Think setting up an OIDC server for added degrees of authentication. I’ve encrypted everything from notes to photo backups, set up hardware firewalls, and isolated critical services to ensure that I’m not at the mercy of a hacked server, which does and has happened multiple times before. There’s a sense of ownership, and dare I say, pride that comes with knowing that you’re responsible for securing your data, knowing how it’s handled, and how good or bad a job you’ve done at it.
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