I pay for one server. On it: this blog, my email, my task tracker, my notes, my file sync, my analytics, and a handful of small services. Nothing on that list is a subscription anymore. Here is the honest accounting of what that actually bought and what it actually cost.
What I moved
The blog came first — a containerized CMS behind a reverse proxy with a managed TLS certificate. Then email, which was the hardest. Then the boring stuff: a task board, a wiki, file sync, uptime checks. Each one was a weekend, and each one replaced a monthly bill that had crept up.
The bills, before and after
Before: roughly a hundred and forty dollars a month across a dozen services, most of them under ten dollars, which is exactly why I'd stopped noticing them. After: about fifteen dollars a month for the server, plus a small amount for a backup target and one domain renewal. The saving is real, but it's the least interesting part.
What got harder
Everything. Upgrades are mine. When a certificate doesn't renew, that's me at the terminal. When a service gets a breaking release, I read the changelog and schedule the migration. There is no support tier, and no “it's not our problem.” The first month was genuinely unpleasant, mostly because I was learning the operational shape of six systems at once.
What got easier
Ownership of data. I can query my own database directly, back it up as a file, move it to any host, or write a script against it. No export limits, no API rate limits, no feature behind a plan I don't want. When I needed to bulk-edit content, I did it with SQL instead of asking a vendor if it was possible.
The parts I'd tell you not to self-host
Email. Honestly, if you don't want a new hobby, pay someone. Deliverability is a reputation game played against a black box, and the day you discover your outbound mail is landing in spam you will wish you'd kept the subscription. I run it, it works, and I would still talk most people out of it.
Anything handling money, and anything where an hour of downtime costs more than a year of the SaaS bill.
Backups are the whole game
Self-hosting without backups isn't freedom, it's a single point of failure you also have to maintain. Two rules: an automated backup you've actually restored from at least once, and a copy that lives somewhere other than the server. Untested backups are a feeling, not a strategy.
Would I do it again
Yes, with the email caveat. The real win wasn't the money — it was learning how the things I depend on actually work. Once you've run your own database and restored it from backup, you stop treating infrastructure as magic, and that changes how you build everything else.