this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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I'm not sure what the disconnect is here. In both scenarios I'm reliant on an ISP. In the scenario where it's on a data center, if my internet goes down or the data center goes down, I am shit out of luck. I am not capable of accessing my data. If it's hosted at my house, I still have the ability to go home and access my stuff. One seems much better than the other to me. It's the difference between being able to access your stuff and not.
There are definitely positives to both, but having physical access to my own hardware that contains my own data is a huge positive to me.
I have a raspberry pi I keep at my mom's house and it's completely managed by me. We live in different states. Would you classify the services on it as self hosted or no? I do not have immediate access to the physical hardware, I am at the mercy of my mom's power and internet. When it's all working I can access my services and data on it. Is she hosting or am I hosting it from her place?
If I rent rack space and install my servers in a data center and have physical access and ownership of the server but not the data center infrastructure. Am I hosting or is the data center hosting?
My point is that "self hosting" seems to have many different forms and there must be some minimal classification that allows inclusion without being overly strict.
For the record I practice all forms with servers at home and elsewhere.
You can still go to your mom's house and get your data, unlike if you're renting a VM.
I'm also completely not arguing that renting a VM isn't self hosting, I'm certain I've said nothing of the sort, I'm just arguing that it's worse than owning your hardware and therefor data.