Over the past few months, I’ve been having some energizing conversations with colleagues and friends about technology trends, personal infrastructure, and the explosion of AI tools. One recent chat with my teammate stuck with me—we got into a discussion about self-hosting, and it made me pause and reflect.
It turns out, I’ve been self-hosting software at home for over 20 years. What started with a bulky server humming in the corner has evolved into something far more compact and elegant. Today, my entire setup runs on a small Intel NUC and a NAS, both quietly sitting on a shelf. Despite the size change, the number of services I run has only grown.
🛠️ From Racks to Raspberry Pis
In the early 2000s, self-hosting meant hours of tinkering, huge hardware, and living with the constant hum of fans and spinning disks. But over time, cloud-native apps and tools like Docker changed everything. Now I can spin up a new app in seconds, isolate it from the rest of my environment, and tear it down just as easily.
Recently, I ran a quick script to export a list of all the Docker containers I’m currently running—and wow, it’s grown! I realized just how central self-hosting has become in managing both my personal productivity and home automation.
LIST OF ALL OF MY DOCKER CONTAINERS: https://a.ugus.to/selfhostjim
🔧 Tools I Can’t Live Without
Here are a few of the services I self-host today that I consider absolutely essential:
1. Habit Tracker
Staying consistent is everything. I self-host a lightweight, no-frills habit tracker that helps me reinforce the routines I care about most—morning workouts, reading, and even making time to explore new tech.
2. n8n – Automation and AI
This is the beating heart of my daily workflow. I use n8n not just for basic task automation, but also to pull in AI-generated summaries, daily briefings, and reminders. It’s my own personal assistant, running 24/7, and I couldn’t imagine my day without it.
3. Plex
For media, nothing beats Plex. It gives me a unified, beautiful interface to stream all of my personal content—movies, music, and old recordings—with zero monthly fee and total control over how it’s organized. We use this at our home for Live TV , TV Shows, and Movies.
4. Home Assistant
This is where the magic happens. Home Assistant helps me automate everything from lights and climate to alerts and energy usage. It’s integrated with everything—from Zigbee sensors to my smart thermostat—and lets me run my house exactly the way I want.
5. OpenWebUI an Ollama
I run my own type of ChatGPT using Ollama (local LLM on my Mac M1) and also allows me to use AI offline.
🧪 Why I Still Self-Host
So why do I still self-host when so many cloud services are available?
-
Ownership: I want full control over my data and how it’s used.
-
Customization: I can tweak things in ways most SaaS tools don’t allow.
-
Privacy: I know exactly where my data is, who can access it, and what it’s doing.
-
Learning: Every self-hosted app is an excuse to learn something new. Especially AI.
💬 What About You?
I shared a list of my running containers with the team at Augusto for fun—and now I’m curious:
What are you self-hosting? What tools do you rely on every day?
Whether it’s automation, media, personal productivity, or just cool experiments, I’d love to hear about it.
Let’s swap notes. 🚀