The costs of all my sites has gone up every year and I have moved around to different hosting companies but everyone tells me I just need to self-host and it will save me tons of money. Right now I am spending $670 a month just on hosting. A friend of mine said I could be spending less than $100 if I did it all myself.

Does anyone self-host? What are the pros and cons of it? (Outside from saving money)

If you can manage it, as in know what you are doing and know how to fix issues should they arise, then yes.

I used to pay for mine and while it wasn't terribly expensive, I ended up bringing my monthly costs to under $30 a month for 3 websites and a minecraft server.

On 6/16/2026 at 9:27 AM, GZip29 said:

What are the pros and cons of it? (Outside from saving money)

Off the top of my head...

The pros:

• You get full control over what is used including specials needs and hardware used.

• You gain data privacy which is a HUGE plus IMO.

• You aren't locked into any sort of contract.

The cons:

• You are responsible for all of the maintenance.

• You run the risk of downtime due to internet or power outages.

• You will need to pay more upfront if you need to expand capacity.

And I want to put extra emphasis on the cost to expand... Because prices for most PC parts are up by as much as 400%. Just look at RAM costs!

Honestly yeah, tons of people still self-host. The big appeal besides money is having total control you pick your stack, nobody changes your prices or drops features on you, and you actually learn how things work.

But you're on call 24/7 now. Something breaks at 2am? That's on you Power or internet goes out? All your sites go dark. Traffic spike or someone messes with you? No support ticket to fall back on.

And $100 is tight for a few sites with proper backups and monitoring, you're probably looking at $150–$250. Still way less than $670, but not magic cheap.

Worth it if you want control and don't mind being the one holding the wrench. Not worth it if you just want to save money and never think about it.

Self-hosting is easier than it sounds and way more affordable.

YES. You are responsible if something goes wrong and you can't ask anyone for help but if you set it up properly and know what you are doing, there is next to no downside to just hosting your sites yourself.

On 6/18/2026 at 9:45 AM, xJamesQ said:

You run the risk of downtime due to internet or power outages.

Is there a way to prevent this? I mean I know a buddy of mine hosts his own and has had power outages but they don't impact his sites. Maybe this is only if you have an in-house server?

You end up saving a lot of costs when you self-host. I have done both and if you have bigger more demanding websites, you end up paying hand of fist for it when you have someone else host them for you. And I will be honest, downtime is going to happen either way. I find it better to be in control cause when I faced downtime while working with a host, it still took days to fix the issue!

On 6/27/2026 at 10:55 AM, GZip29 said:

Is there a way to prevent this? I mean I know a buddy of mine hosts his own and has had power outages but they don't impact his sites. Maybe this is only if you have an in-house server?

You want to avoid any residential ISPs that don't include uptime guarantees, instead you look into using VPS providers with high uptime SLAs of 99.9%+ and configure automatic container restarts to handle unexpected crashes. This will act as a safety net for whatever you host.

On 6/29/2026 at 9:22 AM, xJamesQ said:

You want to avoid any residential ISPs that don't include uptime guarantees, instead you look into using VPS providers with high uptime SLAs of 99.9%+ and configure automatic container restarts to handle unexpected crashes. This will act as a safety net for whatever you host.

This is the way. I mean I will be blunt and honest, I have not had much down time in the 10 years I have been self-hosting. Maybe 3 or 4 times. Compared to the 10 years prior where I was using hosting companies, I had down time 4+ times a year.

I really didn't think of being more specific with what internet provider I use. Using a VPS over an ISP seems to make sense from where I am. I will have to look into this a bit more.

On 7/7/2026 at 9:31 AM, dannydobbs said:

I have not had much down time in the 10 years I have been self-hosting. Maybe 3 or 4 times. Compared to the 10 years prior where I was using hosting companies, I had down time 4+ times a year.

That is interesting. I always see and hear of hosts boasting about less downtime but then you talk to people that self-host and it seems to be a lot of the opposite!

On 7/7/2026 at 9:31 AM, dannydobbs said:

This is the way. I mean I will be blunt and honest, I have not had much down time in the 10 years I have been self-hosting. Maybe 3 or 4 times. Compared to the 10 years prior where I was using hosting companies, I had down time 4+ times a year.

I don't think people realize how much of a hassle it can be when you rely on another business for uptime. I try to get people away from this any chance I get because it is not only a waste of money but the services are almost all terrible now.