Hey all,
Im looking at if i should self host or use services like proton, apple music and some other things?
Self hosted services would be:
Cloud would be:
The main advantage for cloud is little work required, just login and use, but of course its a monthly subscription.
Self hosting requires money and time up front, and potentially maintenance time.
Suggestions?
Tia
I have asked myself this too, and as someone who has the hardware and uses Linux daily, I am very much looking into using self-hosted alternatives to software I use. It is partially a cost thing, but also because some services like Proton make you use their specific clients, which I don’t like.
I am only wondering about the practicality of 3 things I may host: Email, password management, and email aliasing. I worry about email because I have heard it is very difficult to host.
I worry about password management because I don’t think Vaultwarden would provide any real advantage over Bitwarden to me. I feel as though my data is secure with Bitwarden and I don’t think Vaultwarden provides any perceptible advantage.
I worry about email aliasing because I think using my own domain for all of my aliases could defeat the point. On addy.io, standard aliases end in @username.addy.io, which I already don’t like because it could be traced back to me, but self-hosting would have the domain end in @mydomain.com! I don’t know if that could be traced back to me in a data leak and used to spam my other email aliases. I’m guessing not, but I’m not sure! For email aliasing, maybe using addy.io’s shared domain aliases ending in addy.io would be the best.
Overall, for everything else, I think self-hosting would provide great choice and control while still saving money. If you’re ready to learn and tinker with stuff to get going, then I highly recommend it! Especially if you are already familiar with Linux.
Self-host where it matters most, personal files, photos, etc… otherwise cloud is fine for stuff like email, but custom domains are a good practice (though a bit more cost also) in case you want to switch providers.
Saving money should not be the only reason to self-host. I think you need to be willing to play around and tinker. If money is the only reason, then you will quickly give up.
I corrected that statement for you. You seem to be underestimating the time needed for it. Also there is a big difference between simply spinning up something and doing it reliably and secure. The latter it takes a lot more time. Would recommend to use E2EE cloud service, like Ente and Peergos, instead.
Memories and other essentials could be stored securely in the cloud and local instances of Syncthing or Nextcloud for larger files.
I self host a decent amount myself. It can be overwhelming at first, and creates lots of friction initially when you are learning the ropes.
My advice may be contrary to others, but I suggest porting over low-risk tools first (ie not a password manager or email) and then working your way up to bigger fish that have a bigger impact on your life if they go down. That way, as your self-hosting skills increase, you are better prepared for handling more complex/impactful setups
A lot of good thinks have been said already but here’s my two cents.
Regarding cost, my experience is that I can be difficult to break even on the initial implementation cost but of cause that depends a lot on your ambitions and the amount of disk space you need.
Regarding motivations, I second what was already said that you probably shouldn’t do it if your main motivation is to save money - the learning experience and tinkering part should be at least equally motivating for you.
You’ll have to be ready to invest a healthy amount of time to get it up and running and to maintain your setup. Regarding maintenance, my experience is that it come in chunks. Most weeks maintenance is like 0-5 min. but then comes the week where a new OS update breaks something and all of a sudden you find yourself spending every night for a week or more to get everything up and running and/or salvage your data.
And that leads me to the next part which regards the risks. When you self-host your images, cloud documents, notes, calendar, phone book, passwords, other media, etc. you alone are responsible for all these data and if you f*ck something up it’s on you - and yes, it does happen that people accidentally does something that delete 20 years worth of family photos!
Therefore I would advise to:
Personally I wouldn’t self-host:
I was thinking self hosting photos and a few services like tandoor for food.
Email would be handled by a 3rd party.
I can self host thats not the problem, but as mentioned its the time investment, I tried it in the past and it eventually lost the charm for me because I spent soo much time on it, I never reached that stability point really.
I could use Synology photos and drive for an easy way out.
My photo library is small, I dont touch the 10GB limit by say Ente, or I could use proton drive but when I tested photo uploads it didn’t respect the metadata for some photos.
Personaly for me, the selfhosting is very good way to learn about security/privacy and how most of the thinks works. If you goin to selfhost, the important part is to have a good backup strategy, document everything, and never stop learn.
Personaly I selfhost this now: Joplin, Immich, Jellyfin, Ntfy, Radicale, Authentik, SearXNG, Stirling-pdf, Pingvin Share .
I plan to selfhost also - Miniflux, Bitwarden because now supports mTLS
and maybe five others .
OS - AlmaLinux, Proxy server - Caddy