Self-Hosting

ArchiveBox is a self-hosted web archiving tool that saves full local copies of web pages as HTML, screenshots, PDFs, and media. It protects your research and references against link rot and platform takedowns by keeping the source on your own disk. Sites with heavy JavaScript or paywalls archive imperfectly, and storage grows fast.

Home Assistant is an open-source smart home platform that runs locally and connects thousands of devices without sending your home's activity to vendor clouds. It keeps automation working even when the internet is down and stops appliances from reporting on you. Expect a learning curve and occasional breakage when integrations change.

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup service with automatic phone uploads, face recognition, and search, built as a direct replacement for Google Photos. Your entire photo history stays on a server you control instead of feeding a cloud provider. It moves fast as a project, so updates occasionally require migration steps.

Jellyfin is a free, open-source media server that streams your own movie, music, and TV library to any device, with no accounts, tracking, or subscription. It replaces Netflix-style apps for media you actually own. You supply the files, the storage, and the server, and remote streaming requires some network setup.

Nextcloud is an open-source file sync and collaboration suite you run on your own server, replacing Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts, and shared documents with services under your control. Your files live on hardware you own or rent directly. The tradeoff is maintenance: updates, backups, and performance tuning are now your job.

Paperless-ngx is a self-hosted document management system that scans, OCRs, tags, and indexes your paper documents into a searchable private archive. It replaces cloud document services for contracts, receipts, and records you would rather not upload to anyone. Initial setup and scanning workflow take effort, and your backups become genuinely important.

Pi-hole is a network-wide ad and tracker blocker that runs as your home's DNS server, often on a Raspberry Pi, filtering requests for every device on the network. It blocks surveillance at the infrastructure level rather than per browser. If it goes down, your whole network loses DNS until you fix it.

Syncthing is an open-source program that syncs files directly between your own devices, peer to peer, with no central server holding your data. It replaces cloud sync for people who want files to stay on hardware they control. There is no web copy of your files, so you handle backups yourself.

Tailscale builds a private encrypted network between your devices using WireGuard, so you can reach a home server from anywhere without opening ports to the internet. It makes self-hosting practical for non-experts. Traffic is end-to-end encrypted, but device coordination runs through Tailscale's servers, which you can replace with self-hosted Headscale.

YunoHost is a Debian-based server operating system that turns a cheap computer or VPS into a personal server, with one-click installs for email, file sync, websites, and dozens of other apps. It lowers the barrier to running your own services, though its curated catalog and opinionated setup can clash with manual administration.