Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

or service using a private

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

, instead of using a service outside of the administrator's own control. Self-hosting allows users to have more control over their data, privacy, and computing infrastructure, as well as potentially saving costs and improving skills.

History

The practice of self-hosting

web services A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

became more feasible with the development of

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

and virtualization technologies, which enabled users to run their own servers on remote hardware or virtual machines. The first public cloud service,

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

(AWS), was launched in 2006, offering Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as its initial products. Self-hosting web services became more popular with the rise of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

projects,

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

projects and

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

projects that provide alternatives to various web-based services and applications, such as file storage, password management, media streaming, home automation, and more. There is also a sizeable hobbyist community around self-hosting, made up of hobbyists, technology professionals and privacy conscious individuals.

Benefits

Some of the benefits of self-hosting are: * The user has complete control over their data and can decide how and where it is hosted. * The user can customize the site design and functionality according to their preferences and needs. * The user can potentially save money by using a lower-cost hosting service or combining multiple services on one server. * The user can improve their skills and knowledge by learning how to set up and manage their own server and services. * The user can avoid relying on third-party providers that may have privacy issues, security breaches, outages, or changes in policies.

Challenges

Some of the challenges of self-hosting are: * The user has to take responsibility for maintaining and updating their server and services, which may require technical skills and time. * The user has to ensure that their server and services are secure and compliant with relevant laws and regulations. * The user has to deal with potential issues such as hardware failures, network problems or power outages. * The user may have to find reliable and affordable hosting providers that offer the features and resources they need. * The user has to ensure that the server is adequately protected from denial of service attacks (DoS) and any other security threats

Examples

There are many examples of self-hosted services and applications that can replace or complement web-based ones, such as: * Bitwarden - A password manager that stores all passwords in an encrypted vault * Home Assistant - A software for home automation that puts local control and privacy first * Nextcloud - A suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services

References

External links