Why I Still Self-Host

When I started to self-host in 2025 it was more about learning advanced server administration and leaving the big cloud storage providers. Over the time in 2025 my starting VPS expanded to a small private infrastructure with multiple different self-hosted services which allowed me to leave more and more big tech and proprietary services which allowed me to save money which i would have had to spend on subscriptions on these services.

The Hardware part of my Homelab

Currently I have three Virtual Private Servers by Hetzner – which is my trusted VPS and storage provider since I started to self-host. One is a CX53 which is x86_64 based, the other two are ARM based the CAX41 and CAX11 and all are hosted in Hetzner's EU data centers in Nürnberg, Germany and Helsinki, Finland.

For storage I have also two BX11 storage boxes (one as a Backup place and one for storage) with Hetzner which each have 1TB capacity and are upgradeable.

If you yourself want to start with Hetzner – which I can strongly recommend – you can use my referral link (non sponsored) at gelbphoenix.link/hetzner to get a 20€ promo code which you can use for any cloud product from Hetzner.

Besides my VPS instances at Hetzner have I also a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM and a Dell Optiplex 7050 SFF (Intel i5-7500, 8GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 250GB NVMe SSD) which are in my home.

The Software I use and host

Almost all of my server run Debian 13 as the operating system – with the only exception of my Optiplex which runs Ubuntu 24.04. To connect all my servers with each other and create a network of these servers I use Tailscale. I use Caddy as the web server and reverse proxy on all of my servers.

My CX53 itself runs Libre Workspace – which is an open source alternative to Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and others while also being modular and therefor expandable. From Libre Workspace do I use the many modules like Nextcloud, Matrix, Jitsi, Mailcow and Collabora. There I also host – besides Libre Workspace and it's modules and addons – my own Mastodon instance, Forgejo, Castopod, Autocaliweb and this blog with Ghost.

The CAX41 is just to self-host large language models (like GPT-OSS, Gemma 3 or Ministral 3) with Ollama and Open WebUI with it's web search feature powered by an hosted SearXNG instance. The CAX11 hosts my n8n instance, Uptime Kuma, my link shortener via Shlink and an installation of the Firefox sync server.

On my servers at home do I host Adguard Home (with Unbound as the upstream DNS), Jellyfin, Jellyseer and the *arr stack (to download royalty free media).

For some of the services that I self-host did I also write an boilerplate which is readable on my Boilerplates repository. Backups are mostly just handled right now on one of my servers.

What is planned for 2026

For the upcoming year do I plan to strengthen my homelab and possibly retire some services that I don't actively use. I also plan to move my own webpage away from Cloudflare Workers to possibly my own server while retaining the automated deployment via Forgejo workers. That step would allow me to retire Cloudflare as my DNS hoster and use another service – but for that I don't know right now which DNS hoster I want to use (they should also support DNSSEC).

2026 shall also be the year I start to be more active to influence others to – at least – reduce their dependence on big tech services and providers if not even to start self-host some of their own services. Also would I like to engage more with the communities which form my interests and the topics of this blog – meaning that I would like to be at FOSDEM or other (un-)conferences.

What have you planned for 2026? Do you plan to start self-hosting if you don't do it already? Let's talk! 🧑‍💻

If you want to hear more from me you can find me in the Fediverse at @gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de (Mastodon) or @gelbphoenix@gram.social (Pixelfed). For more posts like this subscribe to my new newsletter or support me by becoming a member.