Most people underestimate their software spending by a factor of two or three. The individual charges are small enough to ignore — a few euros for cloud storage, a password manager, a VPN, a notes app, a project board — and they arrive on different days from different cards. Nobody sits down and sums them.
Do it once and the total is usually somewhere between €30 and €80 a month. For a small business with a handful of staff, several times that. It is a meaningful line item that almost nobody reviews.
There is an alternative worth understanding before you dismiss it: running the software yourself on a server you rent. Whether it makes sense depends entirely on factors specific to you, so here is the honest version rather than the evangelical one.
Table of Contents
What Self-Hosting Actually Means
You rent a small Linux server, install open-source applications on it, and use those instead of the commercial equivalents. The applications are mature and largely free:
- Nextcloud replaces Dropbox or Google Drive — file sync, sharing, calendars, contacts.
- Vaultwarden replaces a paid password manager and is compatible with Bitwarden’s apps.
- WireGuard replaces a commercial VPN subscription, giving you an encrypted tunnel to your own server.
- Immich replaces Google Photos, including phone backup and face recognition.
- Gitea or Forgejo replaces paid private repository plans.
- Uptime Kuma replaces paid monitoring services.
One modest server can run all of these at once. Entry-level virtual private servers start around €4 a month, and a 4 GB configuration comfortable for several applications runs under €7 from providers such as QDE. That single cost replaces the entire stack above.
The Real Trade-Off
The saving is obvious. The costs are less obvious, and they are the part that determines whether this is a good idea for you.
You become the support team. When sync breaks the night before a deadline, there is nobody to email. You will spend evenings reading documentation and forum threads.
Backups become your responsibility. This is the one that hurts people. A self-hosted photo library with no tested backup is a way to lose a decade of family photos. Choose a provider that includes automatic offsite backups, and — more importantly — test a restore before you trust the system with anything irreplaceable.
Security is on you. A server on the public internet is scanned constantly. Keeping software patched is a recurring obligation, not a one-time task.
Setup takes a weekend. Realistically, a first-time setup with Docker Compose takes one focused weekend, plus an hour or two a month afterwards.
That last figure is the crux. If your time is worth €50 an hour and self-hosting costs two hours monthly, you are spending €100 to save €50. The economics only work if you either enjoy the work, value the control independently of cost, or have already absorbed the setup effort and can add services cheaply from there.
Who It Actually Suits
Self-hosting makes sense for three groups.
People who find it interesting. If configuring systems is something you would do anyway, the time cost is not really a cost, and the skills transfer directly to well-paid work.
People who want control for its own sake. Self-hosting means no feature removals, no sudden price increases, no accounts suspended by an automated system with no appeal, and no third party mining your data. Some people value that independently of the money.
Small businesses with recurring per-seat costs. Per-user pricing scales badly. A team of fifteen paying per seat for file sharing and repositories can save serious money on a fixed-cost server — provided somebody on staff can maintain it.
It suits nobody who needs guaranteed uptime, has no technical inclination, and has nobody to call. For that situation, subscriptions are the correct purchase and the money is well spent.
A Sensible Way to Try It
Do not migrate everything at once. Rent the cheapest server available and self-host one low-stakes service — Uptime Kuma or a WireGuard VPN are good first projects. Run it for a month alongside your existing tools.
If you found it satisfying, add a second service. If it felt like a chore, you have learned something valuable for four euros, and your subscriptions are still running.
The point is not that self-hosting is better. It is that most people have never priced the alternative, and the difference between an informed decision and a default one is usually worth an afternoon.
