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.
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The comments give some great advice on what to self host, but my advice to you before you start spinning up a million services is to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
Seriously, document as you go and you will thank yourself later. Document niche commands you found online that worked, docker compose files, IP addresses/hostnames, where you put that random config file.
There are some great self hosted wiki and documentation products out there, start with that, then build the fun stuff!
Planned on doing that
I would start with the NAS first. with a proper NAS and a solid network the storage requirements for the rest of your servers lessens.
for example, I've got an off-the-shelf NAS solution that hosts all my movies, music, etc that is mounted via docker in my Plex container on a different server. because it's usually streaming to four different devices at any given moment, and the torrent's running against the same NAS, I'm using a 10gbe copper line.
depending on your needs, a 1gbe should suffice.
having a NAS would also help with backups. I have a 5 bay NAS, one of them is dedicated for backups of both servers and cloud storage from the NAS (personal files, tax documents, etc).
also, when building your NAS whatever you think you need, double it. if you think 5tb is enough, you'll want to get 10tb or even 15tb. I current run 15tb(8tb drives) in a raid 10 with a 20tb backup drive.
this kind of configuration allows me to run 1tb or even sub tb drives on my servers and reduces my overall costs to replace if anything goes wrong. with a raid 10 on my primary storage array I can easily replace bad drives.
the only time I'll really hurt is if my backup drive fails. since it was so expensive due to the volume. but backup drives never fail, right? 😉
unfortunately because of AI all those prices have increased. if I were to build it today it would cost me around $1700. adjusted for current pricing my whole lab would probably cost around $10k (thanks ram!).
good luck and god speed
Everything. Self host everything, even your pets.
How do I selfhost my bedbugs?
I think you need a Windows server for that.
I do hate myself, but not that much
Syncthing so you never have to mail files to yourself again.
FreshRSS for RSS reading
Readeck for saving articles for later (or wallabag, many alternatives)
HomeAssistant
Calibre-web for ebooks
PiHole
Joplin for self hosted notes
Searxng is fun for self hosted metasearch but has sadly been having trouble with Google lately
I remember reading a thread like this a while back and saw Home Assistant. I thought I don't need that.
It's probably the most used self hosted app we have.
Before you even start, consider adopting an 'infrastructure as code' approach. It will make your life a lot easier in the future.
Start with any actual code: If you have any existing source code, get it under git version control immediately, then prioritize getting it into a git hub like forgejo to make your life easier in the future. Make a git repository for your infrastructure documentation, and record (and comment/document too if you're feeling ambitious) every command you run in a txt file or an md file or a script, and do that as religiously as you can while you're setting up all this self-hosted stuff. You may want to dig it up later to try and remember exactly what you did or in case stuff goes wrong and you need to back off and try again. It might seem pointless now, but a year from now, you'll thank me.
Especially prioritize getting your git stuff moved into a self-hosted forgejo if any of your stuff is hosted on the microsoft technoplague called github.
I would look into PiHole vs AdGuard home. Lots of people are locked in on PiHole, but they never tried the other and AdGuard is currently more user friendly and easier to use than PiHole. Not starting a flame war here, everyone will have different view, just look at PiHole vs Adguard home and make your own decision (or try both).
Second this.
And I'll add DietPi is great, easy to run wherever you want. I run it in its own VM on my ESXi box.
This is what I'm currently hosting, might find something here that interests you.
AudioBookshelf: Exactly as the name implies Navidrome: Music Streamer MeTube: YouTube/Video Site downloader ConvertX: Converts hundreds of files. Beszel: Dashboard to monitor hardware MediaVault: My own app I wrote to track my Movies, Music, Video Games, Books. AMP: Video game server management software. JellyFin: Movie/TV Streaming Software FileBrowser: Browser based file management software. Radarr: Find Movies, download them. Sonarr: Find TV Shows, download them. ARM: Automatic Ripping Machine, put in a DVD/BluRay, Rips, compresses, and moves to JellyFin. (Huge pain to get working though, for me at least.) Pihole: Network management and Ad Blocker. Octaprint: 3D Printer management.
I have a bunch of other stuff too, like custom written scrips that show the info from Beszel on my Windows desktop via a Widget in RainMeter. Custom dashboard when I first login via SSH. My next thing to experiment with is setting up a custom website to use as a homepage dashboard for my browser, commonly used bookmarks, news feed, email alerts, weather, social media feeds, whatever else I can think of or get working.
And for anyone curious what the hardware is:
OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with xrdp Desktop Environment when Needed CPU: AMD 3700x RAM: 64GB Boot Drive: Samsung 990Evo 2TB m.2 Storage: 2x Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB HDD RAID 1 GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2060
Since you’re running Jellyfin already, you can put your music in there and use an app like https://discrete.app/ on iOS or something comparable on Android for a better UX
Finamp on Android.
I’m wondering if Android has something nicer looking. Plex has PlexAmp which looks great, Emby’s built in music player in their main app looks terrific, FinAmp is like aestheticslly like the stock standard JellyFin app which is awful.
Discrete in iOS at least is just an attempt at looking like a carbon copy of Apple Music. There must be some good looking g Jellyfin music player on Android.
Bentopdf if you deal with PDFs
Omni-tools if you need to convert between 2 formats or units
It-tools for the fun of it.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| ESXi | VMWare virtual machine hypervisor |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| LTS | Long Term Support software version |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| SSO | Single Sign-On |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
[Thread #54 for this comm, first seen 2nd Feb 2026, 02:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I strongly recommend Overseerr if you are going to run a video server.
Forget piracy. I only host dumps of my physical media (which at least where I am is perfectly legal), but that thing has an database of international streaming soruces. I use it just as a watchlist and to check whether I have access to a thing on a commercial streaming service already. It is effectively Justwatch for your streaming media.
Immich is a pretty obvious thing, too, if you want to get out of commercial image hosting services.
I'd say, though, that's a fairly ambitious plan, and if your self-hosted apps, your home webhosting and your NAS are all going to live on the same home server I'd certainly figure out security and backups before overcommitting. That plan is a lot of hard drives and failure points you're gonna be wrangling.
This was merged with jellyseer and is just called seer now. I believe it's 'safe' to switch to the develop branch they have available. I've had zero issues so far.
Technitium dns (and dhcp) server instead of pihole maybe, with advanced blocking app.
I currently have an assisted Snikket hostle which is an open wrixler.
I'm running:
I have pihole on a pi for DNS.
Isn't wireguard already pretty easy???
Also unless it changed I thought Plexamp was only available to Plex Pass subscribers.
Plexamp - Nah they made it free for everyone a while back.. the sonic analysis aspect is gare kept behind the pass. Iirc But I'm a lifetime pass holder for like a bazillion years .. I think my annual average cost is like $4 at this point lol
Wg-easy - truth be told I just started it up this week. I formatted my phone and wanted to try something else for wire guard. But you are correct wire guard is pretty darn easy.