Tools · Chapter 9
Self-Hosting Trade-offs
What you gain against what you take on, stated plainly before you invest.
| You gain | You take on |
|---|---|
| Complete data sovereignty | Responsibility for backups and uptime |
| No subscription fees (after hardware) | Maintenance and updates |
| No third-party data access | Security hardening (you are the sysadmin) |
| No service discontinuation risk | Learning curve for new services |
| Customisation and control | Hardware failure risk (mitigated with redundancy) |
| Satisfaction of ownership | Initial setup time |
Reproduced verbatim from The Privacy Diet, Chapter 9 — “Is Self-Hosting Right for You?”. The book explains the reasoning behind each verdict.