I don’t have a home server yet but I’m exploring and sometimes I get confused about some posts here.

For example I saw a post asking for recommendation for a “self hosted budget management app”. Can’t you just install this type of app to your phone or pc? What’s the purpose here, will you host it and access it from a browser? Or do you only want to backup its data to your server?

I hope I don’t sound stupid please enlighten me.

  • BearOfaTimeEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    My Raspberry Pi’s cost $5 each. Should easily have a lifespan of 10 years. Show me a VPS that can beat a one-time cost of $5?

    My internet cost is sunk, so I don’t count that.

    I’m running Tailscale so roaming devices always have encrypted connectivity to home that isn’t through an exposed port (working on self-hosting a mesh, will likely need a VPS then).

    I have Backups of systems via a combo of Crashplan (individual machines) and Backblaze for file server data and things like Docker. Backblaze and Crashplan are also sunk costs, because I used them long before self-hosting was an idea for me. I’d still have Backblaze costs even with a VPS.

    Long term I expect to drop Crashplan and to setup Rpi’s for friends and family so they get the benefit of things like PiHole and centralized Syncthing to replicate their mobile device data, I get a Tailscale into their networks for support, and we can backup our file servers to each other.