Overview
Selfhosting is when you host a service accessible by other computers yourself. It's easy to do and can be done using any computer you have in your possession, or even with a cheap locally bought PC. After you verify that your computer is functional, you just need an storage drive to install an operating system to get started.
Why you should selfhost
- Privacy
- Control
- Conveniance
- Fun
- Learn
- No subcriptions
By selfhosting your own services, not only do you learn a lot about computers and networking, but you also benefit from the services you host and reduce your reliance on major tech corporations. Billions of people rely on cloud services with no basic understanding of how they work, and selfhosting your own services is a great hands-on way to get a basic grasp of how everything works under the hood.
The other advantage is the lack of subscriptions. They're absolutely larger upfront costs, if say, you want to abandon cloud storage, but those monthly subscriptions for cloud storage add up. You could buy two manufactuer recertified 4TB HDDs off ebay for $40 a piece, one for redundancy. Google One's 2TB plan costs $10/month. You would pay the drives off in less than a year, and end up with twice the storage. With this space on your server you could sync your photos from your phone using Immich, and store files in general using SMB.
It doesn't have to look like this!
It can look like this!