Why Self-Host?

I wrote previously on how to set up a home server, and today I want to talk briefly about why you might want to invest time and money in self hosting. For many people, it may seem like an unnecessary headache without much return on investment, but there are a few solid benefits to consider.

Privacy and Control

"The Cloud" has become a bit of an amorphous term that gets thrown around without people necessarily knowing what it means. Even the term itself conjures up a hard to pinpoint idea, probably intentionally. To some, it may imply some space up in the air where all your photos, videos, documents, and other data live. When your phone fills up, you put some pictures in the cloud to save some space. Where or what is the cloud? Who knows!

Without going into any detail, the cloud is kind of a fancy way of saying that instead of living on your phone or computer, your data now lives on Google or Amazon or Microsoft's computers. This certainly has its own benefits, as these big companies invest tons of resources into providing highly available and reasonably secure services. All the same, there are some things worth considering with regards to privacy.

First off, have you ever really read the terms and conditions? For anything? Me neither. It's irresponsible, but most of us simply click "Accept" and hope that there's nothing nefarious in there. These terms and conditions are also subject to change. I don't think these big tech companies are evil, per se, but they exist to make a profit, not to protect you the customer. If you really think about all the electronic data you have floating out there, you might find it prudent to keep at least some of it in-house.

Recurring Costs

Business minded people might think about Capital Expenditures and Operational Expenses. By outsourcing your organizations servers to Microsoft Azure or AWS, you save on the former and reap tax benefits on the latter (or so I'm told. I'm not a business owner). That's all well and good for businesses, but on a personal level it's worth considering the number of subscription services in your life. Some subscriptions you can turn off with ease. When I hear of a great new HBO show, I might sign up for a month or two of Max to watch it and whatever else is out there. But if you're paying to store thousands of family pictures in Google Photos, you are probably not going to want to lose those pictures to save a few bucks a month.

You also do not need to shell out for a whole server farm. As I mentioned in my other post, you might have the hardware required to set up a home server already lying around gathering dust.

Learning and Fun!

Okay, this may not apply to everyone, but I think the biggest benefit of self-hosting is learning all sorts of new things. The sky is really the limit when it comes to what you can learn. You can follow tutorials that take you step by step through things, or you can code your own services from the ground up. You'll definitely learn about networks, security, Linux, the command line, and the importance of having a backup!

To some, the few dollars a month to Google or Amazon are worth it not to have to learn these things. If that's you, fair enough! But if you think computers are neat and want to dive a little deeper, I think it's an incredible option.

Published on: July 18, 2025

Last updated: July 18, 2025

Back to Blog