Self-hosting is now more popular than ever, and it’s not hard to see why. Day by day, more of our digital lives is moving into subscription-based cloud services that often fail to deliver.
In a nutshell, this once-niche hobby for enthusiasts is quickly becoming a practical alternative for those who value privacy, control over their apps and data, and even for those who want to save money on subscription services. Fortunately, replacing cloud tools with self-hosted ones is now easier than ever. Here are a few apps that completely transformed my experience.
Build your own personal Netflix
You’ve likely heard of and maybe even use the popular media server app Plex, which essentially serves as the platform for your media library. Jellyfin is pretty much an enthusiast-grade, open-source alternative that offers better customization and more features.
I’ve only started self-hosting a couple of months ago, but the reason I picked Jellyfin over Plex is that it has numerous advanced features that require a subscription on Plex, which isn’t expensive but somewhat defeats one of my goals of turning to self-hosting. For instance, Jellyfin allows hardware transcoding, which is how I was able to utilize Intel Quick Sync on my ancient i5-7200U-powered laptop. The app also lets you download to your other devices for offline viewing for free, adding another layer of convenience.
If you’re still debating whether to pick Jellyfin or Plex for your self-hosted media server, maybe you should try running them together?
Set and forget
No self-hosted Jellyfin media server is complete without the famous *arr stack. These tools can download, sort, rename, and organize your media library completely automatically. Sonarr handles TV shows, while Radarr does the same for movies. There’s also Lidarr for music and Readarr for books, but I don’t personally use them.
Bazarr is the most recent addition to my stack. This particular tool syncs with Sonarr and Radarr to automatically download and add subtitles to my media library. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that supports a range of subtitle providers like OpenSubtitles and Subdl, and as someone who watches multilingual shows frequently, it’s absolutely essential.
Home Assistant puts control of your smart home back in your hands
Where self-hosting delivers the complete package
If you’ve been disgruntled by your fragmented smart home experience that requires a bunch of different apps, and where various synchronizations between devices fail, you need to give Home Assistant a try.
Not only is it the best self-hosted smart home solution that keeps your sensitive data local, it’s arguably the best way to manage your smart home because it supports an extensive number of different platforms, acting as a universal translator for your IoT gadgets.
Perhaps the most impressive part of it all is that Home Assistant can run on pretty much anything, from a Raspberry Pi or ODROID to a mini PC, Windows desktop machine, or, in my case, an old laptop running Ubuntu Server.
I finally paired Home Assistant with my Immich photo server, and I wish I’d done it sooner
Home Assistant meets your camera roll.
Portainer is the visual command center for your Docker stack
Manage your containers without touching the terminal
I run all of my apps inside Docker containers, and having to set up all these different self-hosted apps in PowerShell on my PC through SSH has been far from intuitive. Thankfully, for those of us who run headless servers but are too afraid to touch the terminal, there’s a simple app that makes managing Docker containers a lot easier.
Portainer provides a clean, easy-to-use interface for monitoring and managing your containers in a far more straightforward way.
Whatever kind of guide or AI chatbot you’re using to build your stack, it’s all easier to do when you have an actual interface and can see what you’re doing instead of relying on the few commands you’ve managed to memorize. If you’re new to self-hosting, this should be the first app you install!
Immich eliminates the need for cloud storage for your photos
A true drop-in Google Photos replacement
Google has built an incredible automatic cloud backup system with Photos, but with only 15 GB of free storage, it’s easy to fill that up in no time, even if you opt to heavily compress your precious memories. 100 GB costs $1.99/month through the Google One subscription, but over the long term, it’s often easier to build your own photo backup solution. Besides, you might prefer to keep your photos in your own hands anyway.
This is where Immich comes in. It’s a near-perfect replacement for Google Photos that backs up your photos automatically to your NAS. It includes advanced AI organization features like facial recognition, object and scene detection, automatically generated memory highlights, and more. The best part? It’s completely free. You can “purchase” Immich if you wish to support the developers, but it doesn’t unlock any special features because the team is dedicated to keeping the app fully free.
Immich offers automatic photo backups, timeline views, and AI-powered search. It mirrors the convenience of cloud services while keeping everything local. Mobile apps make it easy to sync photos without changing your habits. You get full control over your data without sacrificing modern features.
7/10
- CPU
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8-core
- Memory
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4GB LPDDR4X RAM
This unified storage hub supports massive capacity up to 60TB. Unlike cloud storage with recurring monthly fees, a UGREEN NAS enclosure requires only a one-time purchase for long-term use, making it the perfect alternative for self-hosting apps like Immich. Equipped with a high-performance processor, 1GbE port, and 4GB LPDDR4X RAM, this NAS handles multiple tasks with ease.
Self-hosting isn’t perfect, but it’s mine
Self-hosting brings back a level of control that’s now very easy to lose in an era where almost everything runs in the cloud. To get the convenience of a cloud-based solution, you often have to trade privacy, subscription fees, and limitations, and you also end up relying on someone else’s infrastructure.
By self-hosting your own solutions, you put control back into your own hands. What surprised me most is just how similar self-hosted apps feel to the cloud. Apps like Jellyfin and Home Assistant provide an ultra-polished experience on mobile. And it’s worth noting that self-hosting doesn’t have to stay local on your home LAN, either—perhaps configuring my NAS to be accessible from outside my home could become my next project?
Please stop exposing your NAS to the internet (do this instead)
Internet access is sometimes necessary, but make sure you’re staying safe.
