← Glossary
Self-Hosting
Running the server yourself instead of trusting a vendor's cloud — gains control, gains responsibility for uptime and backups.
Self-hosting means running the server software yourself, on your own hardware or a VPS you rent, rather than using a vendor's hosted cloud. You become both the customer and the operator. Privacy upside: nobody else has access to your data. Operations downside: nobody else maintains uptime, backups, or security patches.
Things commonly self-hosted in the privacy space: Vaultwarden (Bitwarden server), Pi-hole (DNS blocker), Nextcloud (Drive replacement), Synapse or Conduit (Matrix), SearXNG (metasearch), SimpleX relays. The pattern is: install on a Raspberry Pi or $5 VPS, expose it through a reverse proxy with HTTPS, set up automated backups.
Reasonable middle ground: managed self-hosting providers (Hetzner Storage Box, oVHcloud, Tailscale + a $25 VPS) handle networking and OS-level security but leave the application configuration to you. Useful when you want self-hosting's privacy without becoming a full sysadmin.