Self-hosting

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Self-hosting is the practice of implementing digital services with server applications under one's own control. This is opposed to relying on large public services or cloud services.

Self-hosting is typically done for several reasons, including to enable users to have more control over the services they use, or to allow the user to have more control over their privacy. As self-hosting gives the user more control over their data, it is often used by people to avoid companies from using their data in ways the user does not want or consent to.

The term "server" has several popular definitions in computing. Throughout this article it will refer to "a computer program that controls or supplies information to several computers connected in a network" and not comparably common "hosts that have software installed that enable them to provide information, like email or web pages, to other hosts on the network".

Origin of the practice

Self-hosting typically refers to usage of digital services hosted by a person for just themselves (hence the self- prefix), but they're often made available also to a circle of family and friends, especially services that feature collaboration. Before self-hosting rose to prominence similar installations were typically limited to organizations and housed internal tools, such as company chats and internal knowledge bases.^{[citation needed]} This is still common in organizations, only partially supplanted by software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Today, there are numerous free and open-source server applications available to everyone with an internet connection. Companies commonly employ dedicated system administrators to run such applications, due to some specialized knowledge required to set them up. But over the years the amount of knowledge required for this has been reducing, which has allowed more people to install such server applications by themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Because both organizations and self-hosters largely use the same methods and software, most of the same risks and mistakes that companies have to deal with are present in some form in self-hosting as well. What can be configured poorly in a self-hosted setup can be configured poorly in professional installations as well.

Use cases

Standalone digital services

Messaging (such as e-mail, social networks and instant messengers), publishing (blogs, wikis, etc.), software as a service, most forms of continuous data synchronization between devices and remote access of other devices are examples of services that can provide value to users by themselves, with clients widely available or unnecessary.

Self-hosting such services can be useful for privacy: for those that do not wish for their activity on these services to be transmitted to the internet at all to reduce the number of ways it can leak.

Self-hosting can also provide additional resilience: the service can remain fully functional in a local network where it's deployed — which is useful in case the internet service provider (ISP) has an outage or if an alternative public service falls under new legal restrictions (e. g. censorship) and becomes inaccessible.

Self-hosting can also be a viable alternative when an existing service changes in an undesirable way (e. g. changes its terms of service in a controversial way, changes existing features, gets acquired or taken over), providing a baseline against which service providers could be forced to compete in serving the needs of their users.

Digital services for "connected" products

Various products in addition to (or instead of) autonomous functioning are increasingly relying on a service elsewhere for some of their features, often marketed as "smart" or "connected". For consumer products the way manufacturers commonly arrange this is through deployment of their own server for the product on their own infrastructure.

Most of the time, product manufacturers do not provide controls for users that would allow them to use their own servers. In such cases manufacturers' infrastructure becomes integral to the product and often gives manufacturer complete access to the product post-purchase through software updates, allowing for a number of anti-consumer actions such as retroactively amended purchase (manufacturer changing the way the product functions) and discontinuation bricking (manufacturer shutting down their server, reducing functionality of the product or rendering it entirely inoperable). Self-hosting a server for the product makes these practices impossible; however, most of the time it's not officially supported.

This isn't limited to just physical products, it affects software as well. For instance, games as a service typically require a server to fully function, and server software for such games is not made available to users, making self-hosting for such games impossible and requiring manufacturer's active involvement in order to maintain full game functionality. There are, however, many multiplayer games, especially older ones, that do support self-hosting of servers through dedicated server software, proving that the technology for this already exists.

Typical arrangements

Consumer-grade PC

A lot of server software is capable of running on "normal" (consumer-grade) computers as well. So it is common to start self-hosting by installing server software on an unused computer that can be run continuously or whenever access to its services may be needed.

Because private servers are typically used by only a few users in practice, hardware requirements for some of the most popular services can be meager and can be satisfied by very old computers, which can be seen as a step towards circular economy.

Software-wise, depending on requirements and the level of technical expertise, one might opt for a generic server OS such as Debian or Ubuntu Server for a more do-it-yourself experience, or an OS purpose-built for self-hosting such as YunoHost which guides its users through some of the complexities of the process.

Server hosting provider

Rather than purchasing, configuring, running and maintaining physical hardware, a user can instead delegate most "hardware" aspects of self-hosting to a server hosting provider, which provides almost complete control of a general-purpose computer to a user for a subscription fee.

Control over not just the service but also the platform it runs on (the computer) provides the user with significantly more control over data that it processes compared to just using a service hosted by another party.

Specialized hardware

An expensive high-end option that most closely resembles professional setups, with all the perks and downsides of professional setups: professional server hardware is designed to be more reliable and easily serviceable, but also can be very noisy, which may not matter much inside a proper server room or a data center, but for an apartment might be completely unacceptable.

These are commonly set up for services with high hardware requirements or maintained as a hobby by those who'd like to practice business-grade system administration at home. For the vast majority of services this is unnecessary and is sometimes mocked as such.

Self-hosted applications relevant to consumer rights

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Home Assistant

One of the most prominent free & open source projects in self-hosted home automation space.

Because it provides an unofficial self-hosted interface to and between "connected" products of many brands, it prominently announces anti-consumer actions by supported brands aimed at reducing or disabling that capability, bringing them to attention. Some vendors reconsider their plans afterwards, providing alternative solutions or entirely cancelling their plans for such changes, which Home Assistant reflects in their announcement posts as well.

Further reading

• Cloud (service)
• Local Area Network
• Right to own