This is purely for my own personal curiosity, but what’s the main reason you self-host? I say main because I don’t know how to allow multiple answers, if that’s possible at all. For me it’s the last option; because it’s cool. If it’s none of these reasons, absolutely make additional options in the comments.
@ mods, if this in any way breaks any of the rules or just generally detracts from the sub at all, I’ll gladly remove it. Also I didn’t flair it because none of the flairs seem to fit.
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Privacy, it is almost impossible in the modern era. But still a bit more under control
Security, it is an illusion, very hard to keep on security
Cost, the hardware, time invested and energy may be higher than standard services
Education, good reason
Because it is cool, yeah it is
Better services, disagree, they are not better, usually clumsy and high maintenance, may work as intended or lack features
There is a simpler reason I like self hosting, I don’t want to be subject to the mercy of the changing of rules of a tool I can’t manage. Possible closure, increasing cost, features by tiers, I really hate subscription models.
Cost is kind of in the grey zone for data/media hoarders. Like, I bought two 16tb HDDs and that cost me a pretty penny. I could have used that same amount of money for streaming services (or whatever) and relieve myself of the pain of tinkering. Partially, it’s about saying fuck you to the giant corpos in my own little way, and a little bit is about just knowing how to get what I need without paying for them which feels neat. Sometimes I feel a little guilty doing this but most media are shit anyway, and I buy the things I really like so that’s that.
Privacy, Education, Being Cool. Also, there are some services that are not available commercially.
mostly for fun, cuz i guess for some reason i enjoy having problems, but that leads to it also being for education. i’ve learned a lot maintaining these systems. and it’s just cool, i like being able to say i can and try out different software to see what works. i like the custom approach rather than a one size fits all society
Cool and better - It’s cool when you got something working in your house and it’s better when it’s in your hands, rather than companies which declare limitless free storage for photos and videos, and then after some time and tens of gigabytes they decide to stop uploading more data, limit max size for file and charge you to pay for this service.
Nah, I’ll rather just buy this cool mini PC, components and storage for it once and will not pay infinitely for that sometimes changing crap service.Cost. But I do not agree with ‘Whi would i pay for a service when i could host it myself for free?’
It is not ‘free’ it is cheaper. Today I got a quote from utilities company saying that api access to how much heat I use is 20 EUR/month a software defined radio recover is 20-40 USD + shipping. To do a full setup and research it takes about half of day some exiting HW and electricity but even summing all of that up. It is cheaper and utils company has already lied to me at least twice this year, so… their stacking motivation for me to independetly monitor the metering.
all of the above + more???
It can be all those reasons.
Sheesh could have made it top 2 or 3. Talk about tough
I do it because “all of the above”.
I like control and i like to do cool things. There is a reason I never let a friend manage or host an event to an unhealthy point of being stubborn.
I love my Lychee server, I love my Bitwarden server and I love my Minecraft server. Allows me to simply share it and have no issue or worry of it being looked at.
Cost and privacy. Currently selfhosting adguardhome. Something like nextdns or controld cost like $35-40/year. Mine cost nothing monetarily since its hosted on oracle cloud free tier. Only costed me like an hour or two of my time to set it up. Plus i don’t trust them enough to not sell my browsing habit.
I second this. My journey started with hosting Adguard Home. I needed an adblocker that would not need to run on my phone. Then, as I expanded, I discovered an entire world out there, that fulfills all of the OP’s choices. Now I run 2 separate servers, running a host of services. My wife, not a very tech-savvy person, also loves them as they are so simple, easy to use, and don’t randomly change.
TL;DR: Started out with a specific need, expanded for all of the above reasons and more.
Education, sometimes better service, mostly because I just have fun with and regarding video streaming because I’m not willing to pay for every service existing.
A mix of cost (questionable), education (less questionable) and coolness (not questionable)
There’s no option for “all of the above” and also no option for “I just want to see the results”.