I’m not affiliated with this in any way but saw it posted at the other place & thought fellow Lemmyzens might like to take a look.
I always find it quite hard to answer “favorite” apps as some infrastructure critical self hosted apps aren’t as sexy as others which sit front & centre so I feel they often don’t seem to get as much credit or attention (such as NGinX/DuckDNS compared to Immich/Jellyfin etc)
Hi everyone,
Like in previous years, I’m running a survey about self-hosting. The focus is on your favorite self-hosted apps, but there are plenty of other (optional) questions too. The top five app lists are free response fields, you don’t have to select the suggestions.
Link to take the survey:
https://survey.deployn.de/s/self-host-2026
More info:
The survey is anonymous. Like last year, results will be published in aggregated form. I’m currently planning to publish them in December.
It takes about 10-25 minutes.
Some of you asked for more questions in the comments. I added a lot at first, then realized it took 45 minutes to fill out properly. So I threw some out again, but there are still quite a few. The survey now has a core section that mainly covers the MVPs (your 5 favorite apps), and you can switch on other modules if you want. Almost every question is optional and can be skipped. If you answer everything at a reasonable pace, it takes around 20 minutes.
The proprietary survey tool caused new problems every year, so last year I switched to HeyForm while the survey was already running. That wasn’t ideal for my purposes either, so this year the survey runs on a new app. It should also make entering your apps faster.
It’s still easier to fill out on a desktop computer.
Thank you in advance for participating.
Top Motivation: CostThe several hundred dollars a year and hours spend is definitely worth saving that $14-30/month in subscriptions right? right?
Absolutely. I refuse to rely on cloud anything after being bitten too many times: company gets purchased, unstable pricing or service changes/discontinuation, data trapped in someone else’s server, internet or service instability… 100% self hosted is the safer, saner, more predictable option.
That’s $14 to $30 a month per subscription per user. I’ve got close to a dozen people using mine, most of which can very much not afford those kind of subscriptions.
Eternal Tinkerer 🔧
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Cost savings, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: FreshRSS, Home Assistant, Radarr, Sonarr, Nginx Proxy Manager
I haven’t used an RSS in years, might have to look at that and start reading web comics again.
I recommend looking into rssbridge too! Its a companion that makes most websites rssable
So this rrsbridge lets you add website and then it feeds it to you as an rss stream? That sounds intersting. Mat have to look into it.
It pains me that new achewood is behind a paywall. I understand it, I can’t justify affording it.
This survey definitely looks vibe-coded as heck lol but I hope the results will be good.
My results :)
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Immich, Baikal, Forgejo, qBitTorrent, Home Assistant
God knows I wasn’t going to put cost as a motivation… I am actively losing money running double the storage I am using and 100+ GB of RAM on a Xeon chip, but having the headroom is certainly nice and has allowed me to expand as much as I want. Getting a good deal a couple of years back before the price explosion was a huge stroke of luck. If this server ever failed I could figure out a smaller operation with more confidence.
You have over 100gb of ram? What do you need so much ram for?
Need is a strong word lol. I definitely don’t need as much as I’ve got as I only use 20-50GB on services (Docker and TrueNAS) with the rest being used as ZFS cache. I would not have bought this much normally but I got it as a package in a PC with an RTX 3080, Xeon Gold 6150, and the RAM for $1000 CAD (750 USD ish?). No way was I passing that up.
Baikal
Have you tried out Radicale? Curious if you have any comparison details between the two.
Actually, I use Baikal for contacts and Radicales for Calendars. It helps me keep everything well segregated.
I tried it first and swapped away. I know I didn’t like how Radicale required editing text files to add accounts, that’s for sure, but the main reason I swapped was that the Docker environment kept freezing and using up 200% CPU until I manually restarted it. Rinse repeat every few hours. This was on a new install with 1 user. No issues since I moved to Baikal and the web UI is much nicer.
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 11–20 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Fun / the hobby itself
- My MVPs: Immich, Navidrome, Dockhand, Proxmox VE, Caddy
Reeks of Claude
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 6–10 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Fun / the hobby itself, Customization & full control, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Immich, PeerTube, Ghost, Actual Budget, Home Assistant
I create videos for YouTube/PeerTube and backup all of the raw footage. The actual storage count is currently 130TB in my main NAS with about 250TB for an offsite cold storage backup (as most of my data doesn’t change much) and on-site live-ish backup. I also have the benefit of being able to get reputable used commercial grade HDDs from work for $10/TB, even right now, it makes it way too easy. Shameless plug of my PeerTube instance: https://joeltube.com/ or @JoelKalich on YouTube.
Fleet Commander 🚀
- Fleet: More than 10 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Homepage, homelable.net, healthchecks.io, ntfy.sh, WireGuard
My fleet sounds bigger than it is since theyre all small or older and also small underpowered devices (repurposed laptops, low end chromebox, various pis).
I can’t self host I’m not smart enough :-(
Legitimate feedback for the survey.
Don’t be so down on yourself mate, start with the Linux upskill challenge then look at some Docker YouTube tutorials. You will be there in no time.
A lot of it is doing what other people tell you to do. This may be encouraging or not, but I consider myself fairly versed in tech and there is still troubleshooting where it feels like trying things at random rather than any skilled insight to a solution. The take-away is it’s okay to skip an app that has terrible documentation and you can’t figure out. Start with something that has good tutorials and if that doesn’t work, try something else. If you can get that up and running those skills will carry over.
yunohost + ebay or old office desktop (or literally any computer you can get your hands on for cheap). There’s a lot of people with very strong opinions but you really don’t need much.
We are all learning and we all make mistakes. It’s part of the journey.
Looking at last year’s survey, the number of self-hosted devices has 2-3 first. And Raspberry Pi is most popular.
I wonder about this, because I have Pi for Pi hole, and one for Home Assistant, each dedicated. Then almost everything I self host is on a different server. But this still represents Raspberry Pi twice as much as the main server. I think Pis may be most popular because there’s many single-purposes uses for them.
I feel like (mostly because of my own path) Pi is a great platform to get started with self hosting because of projects like pihole, homeassistant, and osmc. Projects where someone has put together simple, all-in-one solutions where you can just download an image and go. That same approach, and the Pi’s hardware limitations, make it harder to co-host multiple services, while the price point of Pi’s, at least pre-2023, made it reasonable just to run a handful of them. Only once you start wanting larger or more compute intensive stacks does the pressure to use containers/VMs on ‘real’ hardware appear. If you’ve already got pihole and ha running on Pis, there’s no pressure to move them to the big server.
If it’s the path I followed, it must be the path everyone follows :)
I was thinking the same thing. My path was self hosting on old desktops for the longest time then the pi came out and I ended up doing a birdnet project, then home assistant and now I’ve got about a half dozen data collectors on pi zero 2 w machines. They are pretty much set and forget. I use an orange pi for my instance of Solar Assistant because I wanted something that was not affected by anything but the network and the inverter and I know how rock solid these little machines are.
But in the last few years I’ve started embracing docker and NUCs and have pulled apps off Synology, making it just a file server at this point.
So technically I have more raspberry pis than anything else but they are really just edge devices, except for Home Assistant. And it will probably stay that way until there is a good reason to switch. I don’t see that happening for years.
Also love the pi-0-2w, but I’ve started to use ESP32 for those edge sensors. You can get those for like $1-2 each on aliexpress, where real world prices on Pi zero is upwards of $20 now. Truly embedded systems like arduino were always intimidating to me, but esphome reduces ‘programming’ to a YAML for any of the many supported devices. The Pis that are working now aren’t likely to change any time soon, but I bought a handful of ESP32s for $10, and I’ll probably buy another handful before I buy another zero. Maybe convert a zero to ESP32 if I really need a whole OS for something new.
Oh yeah, I’ve got a box of esp32s and mmwave sensors waiting for me to get my soldering iron out. I’m with you, they’re great. I suppose I could somehow figure out out how to do SDR with an ESP32, but I’ve got plenty of unfinished projects waiting for me as it is. ESPHOME makes edge devices so easy to create. And it gives me an excuse to do a little soldering and 3d printing.
The ESP32s are also really good for making old devices smart. One project in my queue is turning a bunch of air purifiers into smart devices that HA controls. They were super cheap and there’s nothing to them but a fan, and a filter but they’re loud. I’m going to make it so they only run when no one is in the room.
Somehow veteran isn’t the right word. Veteran kind of implies you have learned along the way, yet I keep making the same mistakes
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Cost savings
- My MVPs: Immich, Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Learning & experimenting, Cost savings
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 1 device · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Fun / the hobby itself, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Active Directory, Windows DNS (I’m sorry), Hyper-V, IIS 10, Home Assistant
Windows DNS (I’m sorry)
Lmao. Hey what works for you is what works for you, don’t let naysayers steer you wrong.
AI Pioneer 🤖
- Fleet: More than 10 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: Jellyfin, Plex, Foundry, Immich, Pangolin
What is a physical device? I am a bit unsure in relation to this question.
I mean. A server is a physical device. A router is a physical device A switch is a physical device Even my zigbee lightbulbs is a physical device
Where should i draw the line?
