4 unfortunate truths about self-hosting on a Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pis are one of the most popular computers among DIYers, and I use mine constantly for one thing or another. Despite their enduring popularity, they do have some drawbacks.
Self-hosting ignores one of Raspberry Pi’s best features
Despite their popularity as low-power self-hosted devices, most self-hosted projects don’t make use of one of their best features: their GPIO pins.
The GPIO pins allow you to connect all sorts of interesting accessories, usually in the form of a hat, which physically mounts onto the Raspberry Pi.
What is a HAT for Raspberry Pi and what can you do with one?
Talk about a HAT trick.
If you’re not using a dedicated HAT, the GPIO pins allow you to connect the Pi to a breadboard and then to any number of components, making prototyping easier.
They have limited CPU power
Raspberry Pis were originally designed as a small single board computer (SBC) for educational purposes, but they have grown to cover most other common applications for small computers.
Due to its nature, the original design did not emphasize integrating the most powerful processor possible, and subsequent designs did not do so either.
As a result, even the most powerful Raspberry Pi lags behind the performance of a mini PC at the same price.
This isn’t a mark against Raspberry Pis in general: they’re great when you use them for their intended applications. However, they simply lack the computing power to run a busy home lab with a ton of 24/7 self-hosted services.
There is no upgrade path
Flagship Raspberry Pi models, like the Raspberry Pi 3b, Raspberry Pi 4, and now the Raspberry Pi 5, are available in several different configurations. Usually, these variations are limited to the amount of RAM present on the card.
If you get something like a Pi Pico or a Pi Zero 2W, you don’t really have variant options like that. You can get them with or without the GPIO headers attached, that’s it.
If you’re getting into self-hosting, a basic Pi might be fine for a few services, but if you’re starting to do anything intensive, you might run into issues due to the fixed amount of RAM sooner rather than later.
It’s not just RAM that’s difficult to upgrade. You can’t upgrade a Pi’s CPU, which means you can’t really upgrade the GPU either.
Realistically, you can only upgrade things that you can connect via USB, or less commonly, via the GPIO pins.
In practice, this means you can usually upgrade the Wi-Fi on something like a Raspberry Pi 5, since there are all kinds of USB Wi-Fi antennas. You can also upgrade the Ethernet port in the same way. If you’re willing to fork out, you can also purchase a USB AI accelerator, which increases the Pi’s ability to perform the kind of low-precision calculations essential for AI applications.
Most of the things you can add via the GPIO pins, usually called HATS, add connectivity or provide unique features, rather than increasing the base specs of the system. They’re extremely convenient in many cases, but most of them aren’t very useful for most work-from-home projects.
On the other hand, if you’re repurposing an old Windows 10 PC to use as a home lab to self-host your mix of apps, you can almost always replace the CPU with a faster one, add additional RAM, or attach a GPU if whatever you’re self-hosting benefits from it.
They are not profitable
Due to their limited scalability and the fact that their processors tend to be quite power-intensive, Raspberry Pis are simply not cost competitive with other self-hosting options available.
My top choice for cost-effectiveness is an old desktop PC, especially a Windows 10 PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11. More often than not, these are perfectly capable PCs that would normally be good for several more years, but Microsoft’s strict hardware requirements have condemned them to an early grave of e-waste.
You can usually buy these PCs relatively cheaply, and they will have some upgradeability if you’re willing to buy new parts.
Mini PCs are also generally a better value proposition. Even a mini PC equipped with an N150, a low-power Intel processor, will do the trick of a Raspberry Pi 5, and they start at around the same price.
All of this is not to say that Raspberry Pis are bad or that you should never use them. On the contrary, if you have one handy, there are a ton of lightweight self-hosted apps you can run. At the very least, PiHole or Adguard can work with something as low power as a Pi Zero 2.
However, if you are planning to buy new hardware, it is better to purchase a cheap mini PC or an older, used desktop computer from Facebook Marketplace.
