Skip to content

Solutions · Self-hosting

A server for hosting your own things

Files, photos, passwords, notes, media. Every hosting page sells you memory; this workload is sized on disk, and the arithmetic is multiplication you can check. The best disk per dollar we sell is BD-12 — 200 GB for $16.90 — and the page also says the two things a pitch like this usually leaves out.

Deploy BD-12The big-disk line

The arithmetic

What your data actually weighs

Multiplication, in the open, so you can redo it with your own numbers instead of trusting ours.

Storage required for four common self-hosting scenarios
What you are storingDiskShare of 200 GB
Documents and office files20,000 files at 2 MB40 GB20%
A phone photo library30,000 photos at 4 MB, plus a third for previews160 GB80%
Family file sync4 people at 25 GB each100 GB50%
A modest media library60 films at 2.5 GB150 GB75%

Two things reliably break a disk estimate: file versioning, which keeps old copies of changed files until you tell it not to, and a trash that holds deletions for a retention period. Set both deliberately on a machine where disk is finite.

Memory, briefly

What the services hold while they run

Ranges with reasoning, not benchmarks of ours. On BD-12's 12 GB you can run the whole set with room left.

Typical memory and storage behaviour of common self-hosted services
ServiceMemoryFits on BD-12Disk behaviour
Password managerVaultwarden and similar~40 MB299Megabytes. Never the constraint.
Notes and bookmarksText, with attachments~150 MB79A gigabyte or two, unless you attach files.
File sync and shareNextcloud and similar~700 MB17Whatever your files are — times the number of people.
Photo libraryWith machine-learning indexing~2.0 GB5The photos, plus roughly a third again for thumbnails and previews.
Media serverTranscoding on demand~1.0 GB11The library. This is where terabytes go.
Home automationPlus its database~500 MB23Small, but the history database grows forever unless you prune it.

Live prices

The machines worth considering

Chosen on disk per dollar, computed from the catalogue rather than picked by hand.

Plans for self-hosting, with disk, memory, transfer and live prices
PlanDiskRAMTransferGB per $PriceDeploy
BD-8100 GB8 GB32 TB8.4$11.90Deploy
BD-12200 GB12 GB32 TB11.8$16.90Deploy
BD-24300 GB24 GB32 TB9.7$30.90Deploy

Read this before you buy

Two things this pitch usually leaves out

Both are true, both cost us the sale, and both are what somebody deciding this needs to hear.

A server is not a backup

It is one copy of your data in one place, and a mistake you make — a bad sync, a wrong delete, a broken upgrade — reaches it immediately. Self-hosting replaces somebody else's cloud, not your backups. Keep a copy elsewhere, automatically, and test restoring it. Our nightly backups add-on covers the machine dying; it does not cover you deleting something and noticing three weeks later.

The work does not end at install

Updates that need doing, a disk that fills, a database that grows, an upgrade that breaks something on a Sunday. It is not a lot of work, but it recurs — and the people who regret self-hosting are the ones who were told it was set-and-forget. If that is not a trade you want, a paid cloud service is the honest answer and we would rather say so now.

Deploy BD-12Try it for a weekend by the hour

Questions

What people ask before they buy one.

How much disk do I need for Nextcloud?
Multiply, do not guess: it is your files, times the number of people, plus room to grow. Four people with 25 GB each is 100 GB, which fits on BD-8 at $11.90. The two things that break the estimate are versioning — old versions of changed files are kept until you tell it not to — and the trash, which holds deleted files for a retention period. Both are worth setting deliberately on a machine where disk is finite.
How much RAM do these services need?
Less than the disk conversation suggests, with one exception. A password manager holds tens of megabytes; notes and bookmarks a couple of hundred; file sync around 700 MB with its database. The exception is a photo library doing machine-learning indexing, which can hold a couple of gigabytes while it works through your archive and much less afterwards. On BD-12 — 12 GB — you can run the whole set with room left.
Which plan is the best value for storage?
BD-12: 200 GB of NVMe for $16.90, which is 11.8 GB per dollar — the most in the catalogue among machines anyone self-hosting would actually buy. The trade, stated: that line runs on a platform tuned for density rather than clock speed, so a single request is not as fast as on our high-frequency line. For files, photos and sync, which are disk and network work rather than CPU work, that is the right trade.
Is a VPS a backup?
No, and this is the most important sentence on the page. A server is one copy of your data in one place, and a mistake you make — a bad sync, a wrong delete, a broken upgrade — propagates to it immediately. Self-hosting replaces somebody else's cloud, not your backups. Keep a copy somewhere else, automatically, and test restoring it. Our nightly backups add-on covers the machine dying; it does not cover you deleting something and only noticing three weeks later.
What does self-hosting actually cost me beyond the money?
Attention, and it does not end at installation. Updates that need doing, a certificate that renews, a disk that fills, a database that grows, an upgrade that breaks something on a Sunday. It is not a lot of work but it is recurring work, and the honest version of this pitch says so — the people who regret self-hosting are the ones who were told it was set-and-forget.
Do I need a domain and a certificate?
A domain, yes, in practice — most of these services want a real hostname, and mobile apps generally insist on HTTPS. The certificate is free and automatic: a reverse proxy obtains and renews it for you, and this is the one part of the setup that genuinely is set-and-forget. If you do not have a name yet, we sell them with the renewal price printed next to the first year, which is not universal in that business.
Should I start with a big machine?
No. Start with the smallest one that fits what you have today and move when the disk says to — moving is a file copy and a DNS change, not a migration project. If you are unsure whether the whole idea suits you, deploy by the hour, run it for a weekend, and destroy it if it does not. That costs a few cents and answers the question better than any page can.

Keep reading

Related