I finally decided to self-host last week and boy I did not know how much that domain has progressed. I have setup a domain, a VPS with Cloudron and cloud backup in less than two hours. I was absolutely blown away. I no longer use notion and store all my files and photos on the VPS, it has been wonderful. The bonus is how good I feel about my for not relying on the big players.
Can you share more about your set up?
How much storage, are you backing up your data elsewhere?
And what did it cost you, apart from time?
Sure. I might upgrade but at the moment:
- Domain name - $3/year
- Cloudron free tier with two apps - free
- Wasabi for backups (Cloudron supports every cloud storage possible and Wasabi is not the cheapest, I just wanted to try it) - $7/m
- Hostinger VPS with 50GB of storage - $5/m
I will probably add more apps to Cloudron at which point I will have to pay $15/m. But I think it is worth it - you can install every possible app with one click and have single sign-on. I offered to split the service with some friends too which would make the economics even better.
Check out Runtipi, CasaOS, Cosmos, and yunohost for free alternatives to Cloudron.
Ah, I felt something like that must exist, thanks for the pointers.
I'm using Cloudron for 1.5 years and currently trying Yunohost and Coolify to try alternatives. But I gave up on Yunohost which felt too buggy and required too much workarounds and troubleshooting. I feel Coolify might be best for my needs but it's really for devs. Cloudron spoiled me so much everything else looks half baked.
Storage costs are the weak link in this sort of setup. Productivity apps can be fine, but as soon as you start trying to host a music or video it can be expensive.
I have not looked at different offerings for block storage but object storage has been very cheap. Say the Wasabi account gives me a terrabyte for $7/m with egress included. I am not sure whether it is possible to setup the self-hosting solutions to use that rather than VPS block storage though.