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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  • mattmattatwork@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Voted privacy - but more importantly (and not listed) “My services wont disappear with little or no notice”

    • justinf210@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Funny, that’s usually my biggest reason not to self host something. If my server pi dies, I don’t want to lose anything important.

      Of course, I have backups, but restoration is a hassle.

      • mattmattatwork@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        That’s how I used to be; but after a number of things that I enjoyed using got shut down I’ve just become so annoyed at the idea that I self-host out of spite. 😅

  • CMageti@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I started for education, around 20 years ago. Then, the “main” reason shifted to cost for a short period, and is now privacy (albeit education and cost still being in line :-))

  • Jealy@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    What about “it’s a fun hobby” or “for learning purposes”?

  • IC3P3@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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.

  • jusepal@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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.

    • SourceDocMD@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      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.

  • primalbluewolf@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    There’s no option for “all of the above” and also no option for “I just want to see the results”.

  • tech2but1@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I’m going to say sort of all of the above, but not just across the whole board. Some services I host because I want a better service than is available elsewhere.

    For example I host AdGuard Home and OPNsense because it’s better than my ISP supplied router and I get more out of it so that’s better service. I host Immich because I don’t want to pay Google to store all my photos when I have a server sat here that’s quite capable of doing it so that’s cost I guess.

  • Ragerist@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    For me it’s both Privacy, control and education.

    The cloud is just someone else’s computer.

  • vogelke@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Stuff can disappear or stop being free at any time for no reason, with no notice.

  • ChrunedMacaroon@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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.

  • dx3756@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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.