Lately, there’s a lot of hype around self-hosting and running your own apps on a home lab or NAS. But you might be wondering what you stand to gain from it? After all, Google, Apple, and many others offer perfectly competent app suites. That’s what I thought too. But for the last few years, I’ve dived deep into the world of open source and self-hosting. And if you’re curious why, saddle up — I’ve got some thoughts to share.
When I first dived into self-hosting, it was less about control and more about finding apps that filled the gaps left by commercial applications, and devs that actually listened to feedback, feature requests, or helped out with issues. That evolved into wanting more control over the apps I was using every day. It started small with a basic notes app, a self-hosted password manager, even a media server. But all too soon, I was running half a dozen services on my own hardware.