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assimpleaspossi 2 minutes ago [-]
I pay $2.03/month and ran seven theatre company sites including ticketing, five restaurants with online ordering, and my personal site with FreeBSD including email.
kaydub 8 minutes ago [-]
I don't use any cheap VPS providers. Everything is in AWS for me. I do run a single small ec2 instance ($8/mo?) that runs a personal mediawiki and a game server (for some multiplayer games I made).
I run a bunch of cheap (free?) custom apps for myself in the "serverless" or "cloud native" stuff in AWS. Everything else is on my NAS running on my home network (I see people mentioning qbittorrent, jellyfin, etc).
I stopped using cheap vps providers probably a decade ago, not a huge difference between a $5/mo cheap vps to a basic ec2 instance in pricing. And there were always issues with the cheap vps. Not to mention how easy it is to backup mediawiki + mysql in AWS vs having to spin up ANOTHER vps. Maybe there are cheap vps providers that offer object storage now, but I never bothered looking.
throwaway81523 33 minutes ago [-]
By my standards (lowendspirit.com) $5/month is kind of high end for a VPS. I have a small personal web site on a $4 per year VPS. Other than that I have another VPS (I think around $7/m with 500GB of HDD) that I use as a personal storage server and git repo since its internet connection is much faster than my home one, etc. For a while I ran some monitoring tasks on VPSes, though I don't have any active right now.
tierhive.com has super cheap VPS, as low as 10 cents/month for a tiny one (128MB ram, 1GB SSD). ipv6 only, with a NAT proxy for ipv4 I think. It's quite possible to run a useful basic Debian server on that. I ran one with 32MB ram for a while.
ehe78qhe 2 days ago [-]
On my home server (just an older desktop PC)
- qBittorrent for "Linux ISOs"
- Jellyfin so I can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs"
- Tailscale so me, my family and friends can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs" from anywhere in the world
- Self hosting my photo albums. Immich is a handy choice for this. Very useful for personal photos you don't want to trust to strange tech companies.
- Gitea for self-hosting git repos for some personal projects I have not open-sourced.
jawns 21 minutes ago [-]
In my neck of the woods "Linux ISOs" is a euphemism for porn.
It is generous of you to share your "Linux ISOs" with your family and friends.
PetahNZ 5 minutes ago [-]
"Linux ISOs" is just anything pirated in general.
jotato 1 days ago [-]
I picked up a new hobby of buying Linux ISOs from thrift stores. I usually get them for $1/each. Up to 300 now - all mine. Jellyfin is great to organize them
ehe78qhe 1 days ago [-]
I have some Linux ISOs I ripped myself, but it can be especially hard to find older ISOs from other countries - you usually can't find them on normal websites. It's really nice to have them on my own server and not worry about them disappearing someday.
3 hours ago [-]
jedberg 1 hours ago [-]
> Self hosting my photo albums
I used to do this, until I learned the value of offsite backups.
Learn from my mistake (if you aren't already :) ).
Footprint0521 32 minutes ago [-]
What happened?? As someone who is currently doing this without backups…
SmashDan 24 minutes ago [-]
HDD failure probably
patrickdavey 1 hours ago [-]
How are you sharing tailscale with your family and friends? do you run the server yourself?
7bit 1 days ago [-]
How many Linux ISOs are stored on your $5 VPS? One?
ehe78qhe 1 days ago [-]
Like I said, this is on an old desktop PC that I shoved some spare SSDs into. I have a few thousand Linux ISOs on there. I have an rclone job running regular encrypted offsite backups as well, so that my Linux ISOs are safe from hardware issues.
tripleee 4 hours ago [-]
How are you adding new Linux ISOs? Do you prune the ISOs you've already installed somewhere, or are they kept around to be re-installed?
ehe78qhe 1 hours ago [-]
> How are you adding new Linux ISOs?
With qBittorrent.
> Do you prune the ISOs you've already installed somewhere, or are they kept around to be re-installed?
I keep them all. Compression algorithms are pretty good these days, as is storage density.
SmashDan 22 minutes ago [-]
I'm surprised you save much space since ISOs are usually stored in already compressed formats
paulcole 1 days ago [-]
I mean just say you’re pirating…
ehe78qhe 23 hours ago [-]
Whaaaaaat? That's illegal! I'm just an OS enthusiast!
Leptonmaniac 3 hours ago [-]
We all enjoy a bit of sailing on the OS (Open Sea)
doobiedowner 3 hours ago [-]
Boomers like to prove they can still have fun
mycofunguy 4 minutes ago [-]
We're running a no-JS, no account, no cookies online shop for selling mushroom products. $5 a month VPS server, but takes hardly any resources so it works.
(OpenBSD)
ivraatiems 9 minutes ago [-]
I run my personal site and a bunch of various small sites and projects off a VPS that costs around $25/year.
I also have another one of a similar price coloated in Luxembourg, for reasons which are legal in Luxembourg.
monk_grilla 32 minutes ago [-]
I was hoping to hear peoples justifications for a VPS over a mini PC.
I've been really happy after upgrading my home server from a Pi to a Beelink Mini a couple of years ago. Pays itself off pretty quickly once you factor in your subscription savings and you own the hardware, have very fast local streaming on your LAN and avoid having to trust yet another third party.
pan69 54 minutes ago [-]
Long time Linode user here. I have been running the same $5 VM for over a decade now with them, maybe even 15 years, would have to check... I used to host Wordpress websites on it but now it only runs my own RSS reader (running background jobs to ingest the feeds).
simgoh 7 minutes ago [-]
This is something I've been looking to do for myself lately to try and have more control over my "feed(s)" and consume the actual content I like.
Any stories to share about setup or specific apps? I've heard freshRSS named as the way to go.
gediz 42 minutes ago [-]
I have a 8€ storage VPS from Alpha VPS. It's far from a beefy machine. Hosting it for a few years so far. It has a blog generated with Hugo, WireGuard Easy VPN for me and my friends, Forgejo for a few small repos, SFTPGo for files. Even VPN hosting itself saves me and my friend maybe around 50$ a month. Maintenance is easy, and even easier after AI. Definitely worth it.
SmashDan 21 minutes ago [-]
$50 a month for vpn?!
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
My personal homepage.
I dont know how much value there is to that, but i like having an apache server just running on the internet with a page on it. After all it is only $5
Its also useful in a pinch if i have to transfer files somewhere. upload with scp then download with http is easy, and i dont have to worry about third party services or anything.
keithnz 39 minutes ago [-]
right, but curious why not use github + cloudflare pages = totally free and far better infrastructure/scaling. Also for file transfers, there's wormhole (which also handles huge files)
kaydub 6 minutes ago [-]
Pre-llm I'd say it can be more undertaking than most people care to take to move to "serverless" or "cloud native" tech. But now it's probably worth taking a crack at it.
I don't miss sshing into servers or using puppet, ansible, salt, chef.
WD-42 29 minutes ago [-]
You just listed off 3 different services, probably involves even more than that.
Bro has a single server and ssh.
efortis 11 minutes ago [-]
I have little personal notes, and gym tracker apps.
Their backend is just a json file, which I GET and PUT with Nginx + WebDav + Basic Auth
skybrian 2 hours ago [-]
I have 11 VM’s running on exe.dev for $20/month. There’s one I use every day for my links website [1] and the rest are mostly-idle development machines. One of them has the git worktree and preview website for a static website that’s hosted on Netlify. [2]
Checking out a git repo in a Linux VM and hosting prod elsewhere (automatically deployed via a push to GitHub) seems like a nice pattern. Since exe.dev doesn’t charge anything to leave the dev machines running, I leave them running.
This is all new. I started using coding agents for development at the end of December and exe.dev looked like a nice way to try it out.
I recently closed down a VPS I had been running for the last 10 years. Mostly used it for hosting a personal website and some smaller other static sites, as well as git repo backups.
After getting into home assistant and setting up a proper home server I no longer saw a need to keep the VPS running. With cloudflare reverse proxy I can still host personal websites, but from inside my home network. Since getting the home server I'm discovering a lot of neat self hosted options and use it a lot more than I ever did the VPS. If nothing else, hosting your own stuff provides a great place to learn and explore. It doesn't have to be always on/on the internet for that to be true though.
hirako2000 1 hours ago [-]
- gonic (audio streaming server)
- file-browser (a google drive clone)
- prisme (photo library)
Costs a bit more than 5 bucks with a tb drive. But worth it to be always on and these consume little resources. All in one box.
bthallplz 6 hours ago [-]
I started out "self-hosting" by paying for self-hosted app instances on PikaPods, but then I learned could get a $5 VPS and run most of the same apps there for less cost overall per month while knowing very little about how it all works (using CapRover on a DigitalOcean VPS).
The main apps I run are Actual Budget (YNAB alternative), Wallabag (read-it-later service), and FreshRSS (RSS aggregator).
I've also been using the VPS to run some scripts daily for my planet site(s): they ingest RSS feeds, regenerate the static site files, and push the files to my static site host (https://pgs.sh) instead of worrying about hosting them myself (threatening the VPS's apps).
zhivota 53 minutes ago [-]
A few telegram bots that handle my daily schedule and workout planning, my personal website, a personal AnkiWeb server, a language learning tool that aggregates data between LingQ and Anki, a syncthing server, might be forgetting something.
I hope to do more, AI coding allowed me to do a lot of stuff I had been putting off for lack of energy.
mrinterweb 1 hours ago [-]
Curious, what hosted VPS services people are using these days. I am using hostinger, but I don't intend to continue as 63%-70% discount eventually runs out. Then the real cost hits. Its the lock-in and migration costs that make people shell out the uncomfortable renewal price. Looking for an affordable option without the introductory rug-pull.
ricericerice 57 minutes ago [-]
i have used racknerd for years - no fancy features like a real cloud provider, but you get a stable VM for very competitive prices, and they're not super overprovisioned like some cheap providers
I have a $15/annum VPS. It only has 128MB RAM. They don't offer them this small or this cheap any more.
I run a private Matrix server using conduit. It has about ten active users.
wkoszek 36 minutes ago [-]
LowEndBox often lists similar VPSes if anyone here is interested
kaydub 5 minutes ago [-]
I remember buying a lifetime VPS that was listed on LowEndBox for like $20. Can't remember the spec and I guess a lifetime means 5 years, but I couldn't complain for $20
axus 1 hours ago [-]
Testing a game, using for VPN, learning how to keep a public IPv6 address secure. So, it's an investment in education.
Remote server has real differences that I couldn't learn from a bunch of local machines. Oh and it's quite different from AWS/etc.
MisterMunchkin 53 minutes ago [-]
Plex saves a fortune in subscriptions, and you actually get to watch things in 4k.
(Netflix caps you at 720p to prevent you pirating it)
grugdev42 2 days ago [-]
* Mirror my Github repos (in case GH goes down or closes my account)
* Serve my small website (just HTML files using Nginx)
* Monitor other applications (and hits a URL when they fail)
* Occasionally use it as a WeTransfer alternative (just uploading files into the WWW directory with an obscure name)
mindwork 9 hours ago [-]
Jitsi meet instance running on cheap VPS saves me tons of headaches. My country is adopting censorship/monitoring/firewall restrictions akin to China and Iran. Half of services work with VPN for other half you have to disable it.
Jitsi instance is working all the time and ready to connect 24/7.
mtlynch 40 minutes ago [-]
I wanted to do this but I found it hard to secure it in a way that anyone can join meeting links I send but I'm the only one who can create meetings. It seems like Jitsi intentionally makes this hard so that you buy their hosted plan instead. Have you found a good solution?
0x262d 3 hours ago [-]
I use the free-tier Oracle server, but: Nextcloud. Minecraft server. I will probably move my Joplin and Wallabag hosting there soon, currently paying for both. I tried running a Valheim server there, but ran into bugs emulating it with FEX, unfortunately.
keithnz 41 minutes ago [-]
I run a discord bot for my dota2 guild, works well, deployed as a container
denkmoon 1 hours ago [-]
PowerDNS so I have direct control over my public namespace.
Xray proxy so my BYO phone can get to the internet through work's BYO wifi.
HTTPS so I can share screenshots, images and files without relying on some other schmuck's computer.
lanstin 1 hours ago [-]
Not sure it's actually useful, but I run my own DNS and email (and imapd) and gotosocial instances. Small HTTP server for family recipes.
mattfrommars 2 days ago [-]
I repurposed my old macbook pro from 2013 as dedicated Proxmox machine. I run all short of application on it - mostly pulled from https://community-scripts.org/. Along this, I use free tier of Oracle VM to funnel traffic to my box and use that as reverse proxy appliance. Thee isn't a real need to pay $5-$10 for a VPS if you have old machine lying around and use AI to help you configure it. I gave my setup using whichever LLM model I want to use at that day full access via SSH keys.
spl757 2 days ago [-]
dns and email server. i just make aliases that point to a single imap account that is unique for everything i sign up for. if i start to get spam, turn off the alias. it also lets me see who is selling my info or has been hacked when bestbuy@example.com starts getting emails from russia.
Sha1rholder 1 days ago [-]
Deploy email server on a vps is super risky and troublesome
Lammy 2 hours ago [-]
Luck of the draw due to IP address reputation. I host my email on a $5 VPS, but the IP has mapped to my VPS for like 15 years so it's fine.
spl757 1 days ago [-]
I've built email servers that sent 15 million emails a day into all of the major inbox providers, so you could say I know a thing or two about it. This wasn't spam, it was legit doubple-opt in.
It depends on your use case, and ability to actually administrate it properly.
jletts 1 days ago [-]
It can vary, I did it for a few years with no issues or deliverability problems
7bit 1 days ago [-]
Lol no and no
qup 13 hours ago [-]
I've been doing this for over a decade, and I've never had one turn to spam yet.
I do think about it sometimes when databases leak, though.
rerdavies 3 hours ago [-]
I had an abandoned ISP email account dating to the 90's that I used before I sold my soul to Google. Out of curiosity, I resurrected it, last year, and sure enough, it has been chunking away receiving about 400 spam email messages a day.
To be honest, I did use it as a sacrificial email account for a while, used to sign up for websites that weren't completely trustworthy back in the day.
VariousPrograms 1 hours ago [-]
I have a website, git, and syncthing relay hosted on a bargain basement VPS. Lowendbox lists some providers for like $1-2/mo.
rpdillon 4 hours ago [-]
I host about a dozen services across my home lab and my VPS, but CopyParty takes the cake.
Having a WebDAV enabled a server that can generate thumbnails for photos, allow browsing through them, serve as an audio and video player, and also acts as a markdown and note-taking server has been immensely valuable. I write several apps that can write themselves back to the server over WebDAV sort of like tiddlywiki, so the overall combination has been extremely useful.
sebnun 2 days ago [-]
I run a language learning app* on a single VPS, for free.
I'm not sure if you can still get it, but Oracle used to offer very generous VPS for free. I have a 4 CPUs, 24 GB memory VPS that I'm using for several things, including running the backend and the marketing site for that app.
I installed Plex but ended up not using it, so I removed it.
On no so mini pc, plex, backups, mini apps that I build for my self, GitHub runners, homeassistant... Google photos bot yet, I am worry about Who Will manage It if I die and my family would lost all the pictures, maybe if someday one of my kids get interested in IT...
Recently I moved everything to nixos with the help of Claude, It did everything.
fak3r 5 hours ago [-]
Things I use from home and away, two main things: Vikunja https://vikunja.io/ - todo list manager, I use it on all my computers, and phone // Websites - various personal, and work websites that I need up 24/7.
I self-host plenty at home, but most are things that are mainly needed at home like Jellyfin, however that's available to others via the NAT/firewall/Traefik, but other things stay inside the FW since I don't need to access them from the outside.
1 days ago [-]
mwham 54 minutes ago [-]
Are all these people saying Hermes bots or something?
jdboyd 2 days ago [-]
Here are a few things I do:
Host static content behind nginx
Run filestash as a partial GoogleDrive replacement (I use it for sharing files with other people, like deliverables), files place on an S3 compatible object store.
Run vaultwarder for myself and some family members.
Run a container registry service backed by an s3 compatible object store.
Run a django web application I wrote for my own use. However, it stores to postgresql running in a different VPS.
Run caddy for ssl termination and reverse proxying the other services running here.
Redis (I forget if that was for filestash or the container registry, but can be configured to be very light weight).
All of those are in different containers running through podman.
justsomehuman 23 minutes ago [-]
Not quite as cheap as $5 but I've been running at Hetzner CAX31 for a couple of years now and I run the following services / apps.
I used to run a couple of Hugo blogs but I've ended up moving them to bunny.
scottydelta 1 days ago [-]
I developed tarvis.io which is being used by friends and family to self host notion alternative and run hermes agents. This let's them run self hosted apps as actual apps without having to worry about the server or setups.
One friend was running a gitlab runner on a laptop but moved to tarvis given how easy it is. Tarvis has a catalog of 750 apps already so I am sure you can find a few things from there to run 24/7.
IMO being able to see all the apps in a catalog and being able to easily add that app and experiment helped me figure out which apps I should be running.
DeluluDon 2 hours ago [-]
A Reticulum Network Stack transport node that's geographically strategic. I liked the idea behind it.
chapz 3 hours ago [-]
Transmission, Tailscale, Glance Homepage and NginxProxy which points to my local PC and the rest of the services running there.
runjake 1 days ago [-]
My own vibe-coded replacements for services that I formerly paid a subscription for, for services that need the best latency or uptimes. Also, I have a couple physical Linux boxes with other services running for stuff less latency sensitive or that require much more RAM and storage.
Caveat: almost all of them only listen on a Tailscale network interface, so they are not directly exposed to the Internet.
neverminder 1 days ago [-]
Seedbox. With 5TB storage attached. Glory to Hetzner.
01arjuna 1 days ago [-]
Don't ever give it up, it won't be $5 anymore.
mceleri 3 hours ago [-]
Dev guy here, so tailscale + Antigravity (+ GitHub).
I use it to vibecode from my smartphone
sigbottle 54 minutes ago [-]
Self hosting nebula
solnyshok 1 hours ago [-]
tailscale, onedrive, smb, transmission, torrserver, stremio server
curious_cat_163 2 hours ago [-]
I recently started an AT Proto PDS.
jotato 1 days ago [-]
Mine aren't technically VPSs but I have two mini pc.
- Jellyfin
- Audiobook shelf
- Immich
- ChangeDetection (for monitoring when something is back in stock)
- Minecraft server for my kids
- Several apps I have for my own use
- HomeAssistant
- Hermes
TZubiri 45 minutes ago [-]
A computer professional should have at least 1 vps online 24/7 in the same way a plumber should have a wrench.
Just spending thinking juice on whether you should spend 5$/mo on a server is already a huge issue, just do it and in general increase your investment in proffessional tooling.
ogou 2 days ago [-]
Messaging queues and brokers. RabbitMQ, BullMQ, etc. Simple services, but I've learned to keep them on their own images so they recover fast and don't compete with other resources.
dare944 2 days ago [-]
Mail / IMAP server for my family domain. Small web server with a few static content sites. Trillium notes server.
Pretty low maintenance overall - I can go months without even thinking about it.
onel 2 days ago [-]
I keep moose os instance on a vps, for immich, cap (recordings), cal for meetings and one app for notes.
Small productivity apps that I just like to have access to everywhere.
Sha1rholder 2 days ago [-]
Deploy a vpn
spcebar 23 hours ago [-]
Fun little single serve websites and side projects. Built a little graffiti wall a few years back which runs on my VPS and requires basically no attention.
robotnikman 41 minutes ago [-]
reverse proxy
dyauspitr 1 hours ago [-]
VPN and a virtual machine that downloads torrents. Host your blog on it if you don’t get a lot of visitors.
slipwalker 1 days ago [-]
openresty with several half-done micro-saas, written in golang with sqlite3 storage.
Exit node for friends in countries with internet censorship. Specific use case, but it is mine.
runnr_az 3 hours ago [-]
finger.farm finger server...
cutthegrass2 2 days ago [-]
a container image with a wireguard server plus a bunch of host configuration scripts to automate the setup.
Handy to have a non commercial VPN solution you can deploy in any region.
Kim_Bruning 2 days ago [-]
Right this minute I've got wireguard and caddy up.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2 days ago [-]
1. Authoritative DNS server
2. Rendezvous server ("supernode")
calvinmorrison 1 hours ago [-]
website yes but what about irc bouncer?
browningstreet 2 days ago [-]
Hermes and an Orca dev server
bigstrat2003 4 hours ago [-]
I have a small VPS on which I run a Discord bot for my friends, as well as an NTP server that is part of the pool. It also serves some light web traffic (my Fossil repos, not that anyone really cares).
mikewarot 2 days ago [-]
I've seen too many chat services go away, or behind a paywall, so I vibe-coded my own chat and use the VPS to host the hole-punching infrastructure, because I and my friend who I wish to chat with are both behind NAT.
The price was low enough that I left it running.
justsomehnguy 3 hours ago [-]
thatsbait.jpg
I can't qualify for the $5 here, but:
I have a bunch of them what faciliate the needs to access the network resources what block my $default connection.
I'm running my own NS on them and this is always a question if does really worth it - but it works for me, including hosting a dozen of domains and not being depended on any 3rd party, including the bills and their web interfaces, along with tge security shenanigans[0].
There is Forgejo, Syncthing relay, Syncthing client and a file server for the most important things.
Formerly there was a NextCloud instance as a gateway to access the before mentioned fileserver.
Zabbix server never made it to a rented monitoring service but it is still warns me about the problems way before even the $job one does.
Oh, I'm running docker-mailserver which backups my mail from a couple accounts I do have.
[0] I do have and had services what locked out me of my accounts for my security. It's quite a sad experience.
phs318u 2 days ago [-]
NetBird on the VPS.
Proxmox VE with various guests (PeaNUT, Gitea, Ntfy, n8n, AI inference, agents) running across 3 servers (total >300GB RAM, 6TB SSD storage), with a separate Proxmox Backup server.
I run a bunch of cheap (free?) custom apps for myself in the "serverless" or "cloud native" stuff in AWS. Everything else is on my NAS running on my home network (I see people mentioning qbittorrent, jellyfin, etc).
I stopped using cheap vps providers probably a decade ago, not a huge difference between a $5/mo cheap vps to a basic ec2 instance in pricing. And there were always issues with the cheap vps. Not to mention how easy it is to backup mediawiki + mysql in AWS vs having to spin up ANOTHER vps. Maybe there are cheap vps providers that offer object storage now, but I never bothered looking.
tierhive.com has super cheap VPS, as low as 10 cents/month for a tiny one (128MB ram, 1GB SSD). ipv6 only, with a NAT proxy for ipv4 I think. It's quite possible to run a useful basic Debian server on that. I ran one with 32MB ram for a while.
- qBittorrent for "Linux ISOs"
- Jellyfin so I can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs"
- Tailscale so me, my family and friends can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs" from anywhere in the world
- Self hosting my photo albums. Immich is a handy choice for this. Very useful for personal photos you don't want to trust to strange tech companies.
- Gitea for self-hosting git repos for some personal projects I have not open-sourced.
It is generous of you to share your "Linux ISOs" with your family and friends.
I used to do this, until I learned the value of offsite backups.
Learn from my mistake (if you aren't already :) ).
With qBittorrent.
> Do you prune the ISOs you've already installed somewhere, or are they kept around to be re-installed?
I keep them all. Compression algorithms are pretty good these days, as is storage density.
(OpenBSD)
I also have another one of a similar price coloated in Luxembourg, for reasons which are legal in Luxembourg.
I've been really happy after upgrading my home server from a Pi to a Beelink Mini a couple of years ago. Pays itself off pretty quickly once you factor in your subscription savings and you own the hardware, have very fast local streaming on your LAN and avoid having to trust yet another third party.
Any stories to share about setup or specific apps? I've heard freshRSS named as the way to go.
I dont know how much value there is to that, but i like having an apache server just running on the internet with a page on it. After all it is only $5
Its also useful in a pinch if i have to transfer files somewhere. upload with scp then download with http is easy, and i dont have to worry about third party services or anything.
I don't miss sshing into servers or using puppet, ansible, salt, chef.
Bro has a single server and ssh.
Their backend is just a json file, which I GET and PUT with Nginx + WebDav + Basic Auth
Checking out a git repo in a Linux VM and hosting prod elsewhere (automatically deployed via a push to GitHub) seems like a nice pattern. Since exe.dev doesn’t charge anything to leave the dev machines running, I leave them running.
This is all new. I started using coding agents for development at the end of December and exe.dev looked like a nice way to try it out.
[1] https://skybrian-links.exe.xyz/ [2] https://pages.skybrian.com/
After getting into home assistant and setting up a proper home server I no longer saw a need to keep the VPS running. With cloudflare reverse proxy I can still host personal websites, but from inside my home network. Since getting the home server I'm discovering a lot of neat self hosted options and use it a lot more than I ever did the VPS. If nothing else, hosting your own stuff provides a great place to learn and explore. It doesn't have to be always on/on the internet for that to be true though.
Costs a bit more than 5 bucks with a tb drive. But worth it to be always on and these consume little resources. All in one box.
The main apps I run are Actual Budget (YNAB alternative), Wallabag (read-it-later service), and FreshRSS (RSS aggregator).
I've also been using the VPS to run some scripts daily for my planet site(s): they ingest RSS feeds, regenerate the static site files, and push the files to my static site host (https://pgs.sh) instead of worrying about hosting them myself (threatening the VPS's apps).
I hope to do more, AI coding allowed me to do a lot of stuff I had been putting off for lack of energy.
https://www.racknerd.com/specials/
I run a private Matrix server using conduit. It has about ten active users.
Remote server has real differences that I couldn't learn from a bunch of local machines. Oh and it's quite different from AWS/etc.
(Netflix caps you at 720p to prevent you pirating it)
Jitsi instance is working all the time and ready to connect 24/7.
Xray proxy so my BYO phone can get to the internet through work's BYO wifi.
HTTPS so I can share screenshots, images and files without relying on some other schmuck's computer.
It depends on your use case, and ability to actually administrate it properly.
I do think about it sometimes when databases leak, though.
To be honest, I did use it as a sacrificial email account for a while, used to sign up for websites that weren't completely trustworthy back in the day.
Having a WebDAV enabled a server that can generate thumbnails for photos, allow browsing through them, serve as an audio and video player, and also acts as a markdown and note-taking server has been immensely valuable. I write several apps that can write themselves back to the server over WebDAV sort of like tiddlywiki, so the overall combination has been extremely useful.
I installed Plex but ended up not using it, so I removed it.
* https://www.langturbo.com
Recently I moved everything to nixos with the help of Claude, It did everything.
I self-host plenty at home, but most are things that are mainly needed at home like Jellyfin, however that's available to others via the NAT/firewall/Traefik, but other things stay inside the FW since I don't need to access them from the outside.
All of those are in different containers running through podman.
Actual Budget - https://github.com/actualbudget/actual
AirTrail - https://github.com/johanohly/AirTrail
Beszel - https://github.com/henrygd/beszel
Coder - https://github.com/coder/coder
Crowdsec - https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec
Dawarich - https://github.com/Freika/dawarich
Dozzle - https://github.com/amir20/dozzle
Forgejo - https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo
Forgejo runner - https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner
Grafana - https://github.com/grafana/grafana
Immich - https://github.com/immich-app/immich
Karakeeo - https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep
KitchenOwl - https://github.com/tombursch/kitchen owl
Loki - https://github.com/grafana/loki
Matrix - Tuwunel (https://github.com/matrix-construct/tuwunel) and cinny (https://github.com/cinnyapp/cinny)
memos - https://github.com/usememos/memos
Nourish - https://github.com/norish-recipes/norish
ntfy - https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy
oauth2-proxy - https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy
Outline - https://github.com/outline/outline
Paperless-ngx - https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx
Pingvin Share- https://github.com/stonith404/pingvin-share
Pixelfed - https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed
Pocket ID - https://github.com/pocket-id/pocket-id
Reitti - https://github.com/dedicatedcode/reitti
Signal CLI rest API - https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api
Slink - https://github.com/andrii-kryvoviaz/slink
Ghost - personal music blog
Traefik - https://github.com/traefik/traefik
Umami - https://github.com/umami-software/umami
Uptime Kuma - https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma
Vikunja - https://github.com/go-vikunja/vikunja
wg-easy - https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy
ZeroByte - https://github.com/nicotsx/zerobyte
I used to run a couple of Hugo blogs but I've ended up moving them to bunny.
One friend was running a gitlab runner on a laptop but moved to tarvis given how easy it is. Tarvis has a catalog of 750 apps already so I am sure you can find a few things from there to run 24/7.
IMO being able to see all the apps in a catalog and being able to easily add that app and experiment helped me figure out which apps I should be running.
Caveat: almost all of them only listen on a Tailscale network interface, so they are not directly exposed to the Internet.
- Jellyfin
- Audiobook shelf
- Immich
- ChangeDetection (for monitoring when something is back in stock)
- Minecraft server for my kids
- Several apps I have for my own use
- HomeAssistant
- Hermes
Just spending thinking juice on whether you should spend 5$/mo on a server is already a huge issue, just do it and in general increase your investment in proffessional tooling.
Pretty low maintenance overall - I can go months without even thinking about it.
( my post-factum inspiration: https://stevehanov.ca/blog/how-i-run-multiple-10k-mrr-compan... )
Handy to have a non commercial VPN solution you can deploy in any region.
2. Rendezvous server ("supernode")
The price was low enough that I left it running.
I can't qualify for the $5 here, but:
I have a bunch of them what faciliate the needs to access the network resources what block my $default connection.
I'm running my own NS on them and this is always a question if does really worth it - but it works for me, including hosting a dozen of domains and not being depended on any 3rd party, including the bills and their web interfaces, along with tge security shenanigans[0].
There is Forgejo, Syncthing relay, Syncthing client and a file server for the most important things.
Formerly there was a NextCloud instance as a gateway to access the before mentioned fileserver.
Zabbix server never made it to a rented monitoring service but it is still warns me about the problems way before even the $job one does.
Oh, I'm running docker-mailserver which backups my mail from a couple accounts I do have.
[0] I do have and had services what locked out me of my accounts for my security. It's quite a sad experience.
Proxmox VE with various guests (PeaNUT, Gitea, Ntfy, n8n, AI inference, agents) running across 3 servers (total >300GB RAM, 6TB SSD storage), with a separate Proxmox Backup server.