A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
Your post was removed because it wasn’t about any self-hosted applications, services, or infrastructure. Instead, you were complaining about the customer support of a VPS provider.
A case could be made that Rule 7 should have been cited, instead of Rule 3.
If OP was self-hosting they wouldn't have had a problem with their hosting provider.
As someone runnings things out of my basement computers, i have a lot of problems with my hosting provider
I hear ya. My hosting provider is crap too.
Alright, I guess I should have rather made a post like PSA: beware of Netcup, they shut you down on suspicion of doing stuff against their ToS whether it's actually the case or not and without giving you a warning to respond.
meh...I wouldn't get too crunk about it. If you're here for any length of time, you're bound to have a few mod deleted posts.
i think that would be called remote hosting or cloud hosting? self-hosting is where you host the services your self, without third party hardware or systems.
It is selfhosting when YOU set it up and CONTROL it.
Doesn't matter what machine it runs on. Not everyone has the option of running a machine at home.
If you can't run a machine at home then you can't self-host. You're welcome to cloud-host though.
"The cloud" is somebody else's computer. Somebody else leases you the space and compute, somebody else can turn the physical machine off or terminate your access to their service. Self-hosting is about removing as many somebody-elses as possible (you're still on the hook for stuff like power and an ISP, though a lot of self-hosted stuff is also designed to function purely offline so it's just power for that stuff).
You don't have a mini generator in your home lab XD.
though a lot of self-hosted stuff is also designed to function purely offline so it's just power for that stuff
Taken to an extreme: Something about those websites and services running off-grid on renewable energy just makes me giddy.
In my opinion, it's (the service) self-hosted and not home-hosted. Hardware is just a platform.
Right. Then if this would have been a locally hosted scenario, it's like making a post to complain about the service of their electricity company or ISP. Could similarly be reasonably considered on- or offtopic. But I think this sub is more in the spirit of "there is no cloud, just someone elses computer". I'm with mod on this one.
Thank you. I was thinking the same thing. Some things it makes sense to host in your home. Things like large media, home automation, etc. Some things it doesn’t. Like DNS, service that require large amounts of egress (most home internet is very asymmetric), anything with a more public face.
Generally it boils down to privacy and reliability. If it’s private, keep it home. If it needs more reliability, put it on a VPS.
My home hardware is just not reliable enough to host something critical. I have redundant systems but it might take a bit to get stuff back.
This idea of it not being self hosted because it’s on somebody else’s computer is just weird.
This idea of it not being self hosted because it’s on somebody else’s computer is just weird.
I am running the software. I set it up. I maintain it. I can change it to whatever I want. It is therefore self-hosted.
I agree, but Is it your hardware? Does an outside company own your hardware? Did you set up your own hardware that you control as your own (self) place of hosting? Do you maintain all of that hardware or does an outside company maintain that? Can a company arbitrarily shut down your host like what happened in OPs case?
Self-hosting is my choice to use my own hardware to (self) host. I am wanting to slowly move other stuff from hosting providers and self-host it on my own hardware.
I agree with all your statements except for the last sentence, because I use those same arguments to judge whether or not to host at home (self) or host externally.
I mean I get what you’re saying. And certain things I really do want in my house. But at this point I feel like we disagree on a definition which is just kind of silly. As someone else said that used the distinction of home-hosted and self-hosted. I like being in control of my stuff and I think we both agree on that.
Hey, I'm glad you said that! You're right, we are just arguing semantics. We both agree that this hobby/job is something important
I put my uptime kuma on the VPS to monitor my home infrastructure from the outside. Let's me know when things go down much more reliably.
This is a great way to say it. I feel the same. You put the same effort in regardless where it comes from.
Well, if you want to stir the pot, there are heavy discussions on both sides of the fence. Personally, I don't get all pedantic about it. To quote Ice Cube; 'Do your thing man, fuck what they looking at'.
As far as your post being deleted, it seems to be arbitrary at times and rather silent when courteous inquiries are made.
Honestly, do we need a legal definition of what "self hosting" is and what isn't?
I didn't see your post and in the modlog I can only see it's title: "Apparently I'm into Web3, says Netcup" [ed: Netcup is a hosting company].
If your post was discussing stuff specific to your hosting provider, then the mods did well in removing it - if you were talking about things that would have interested this community, then they have probably been too rash in removing the post.
In my opinion, "self-hosted" means that you host it yourself.
Running services in the cloud (i.e. someone else is hosting it) isn't the same as hosting it yourself.
Just have fun, though. Not everyone is in a situation where they can self host. Just do what works for you.
Imo it’s hosting stuff for yourself or your family. In cloud or closet. If you have an advanced nas and you set up shares so everyone in the house can use it, it’s self-hosted storage. If you set up an iCloud account its not. If you rent vps, manage firewalls and reverse proxies and host your stuff there it’s selfhosting. If you use digital ocean or aws and do it for yourself its selfhosting. Saas isnt self hosting
I would be inclined to think that if you are just renting a machine or VM and all the configuration/maintenance is your problem it would be close enough. But I am not a mod and don't want to be.
To me, it is not. If the internet or anything else goes down you lose all access. You are not hosting your services, so claiming to be SELF-hosting is not really accurate.
Furthermore, in the phylosophical aspect, you depend on a private company for all your infrastructure and are not doing anything against the centralization of the internet. To me, this is one of the core reasons I self-host. Maybe we need to make new terms for this, but allowing anything under the corporate cloud umbrella to be called SELF-hosting seems bad to me.