You have decided to self-host your services (maybe using a web server), for better privacy, security, lower costs, or just because you want to learn.
Congratulations! Now you have to watch out for some pitfalls that affect self-hosters and homelabbers… 🥲
In this post, I will show you some pitfalls to watch out, so you would not be hit with them later when self-hosting stuff.
Electricity costs
When you host lots of infrastructure hardware yourself at home (maybe one that became a little data center? 😅) , you would get high electricity costs. This is because you are running quite some computers at once, in addition they are turned on for long time, which drains quite some electricity and as a result you would get an expensive bill.
I experienced that once when I had a rack-mount server from ~2009 (!) at home to host a website for an earlier web server I was making that eventually failed to get traction.
Fix: Use more power-efficient devices (like Raspberry Pis) over something like older PCs. Or just use a VPS or a dedicated server, if you accept one (you would have less expensive hosting bills instead).
ISP provider restrictions
OK, so you managed to work around electricity costs. Now, how would you access self-hosted services from the outside (if you want to)?
One such way is forwarding ports in your router. But, your ISP might not like that, and you might get banned.
Also, many ISPs hand you a dynamic IP, which could change often. Though this is a problem with a working workaround (ddclient, NoIP, and other DDNS clients and services).
And then there are ISPs that block port 80… 🥲
Fix: Maybe use a tunnel of some sort (Tailscale, Cloudflare, ngrok) instead?
Even more costs!
The video below summarizes it all:
- First you want to self-host your storage using NAS.
- Then a music server using Navidrome so you grab a laptop and install Proxmox on it.
- Then buy a workstation that would act as a server for $729.93
- Then a UPS for $155.86
- Then multiple hard-drives for RAID
- Then a mini PC that acts as a router and install pfSense on it. Or use Unifi router, because you heard about all of these problems ISP-provided routers have.
- and so on… 🥲
This would quickly get expensive, and you would spend lots of money on self-hosting, where it could be spent on something more valuable… 😅
I have been there too, buying many hard-drives to build a RAID array. And a UPS and batteries for backup.
Fix: Be cost-conscious. Put constraints on costs. Check if you are going to need the hardware at all. This is also what efficient hosting providers are doing. Also, do things that do not scale, for now. You will upgrade it once it stops working at scale.
You (and others) cannot sleep
Imagine this: your server is running a lot of time, with fans spinning up. Then you want to go sleeping. Then this gets loud after some time. Then you (and others) cannot sleep. You wake up, and… 😪
Fix: Choose quiet fans and devices instead of loud ones. Or use less devices (you can use virtualization for that).
The gravity
You went into self-hosting, and oh no, it ends up taking lots of time…
I am reminding myself of https://sanj.dev/post/self-hosting-addiction-when-infrastructure-becomes-product/, about self-hosting “addiction” and how to fix that.
Especially this:
The 3-Question Litmus Test
Before adding any infrastructure complexity, ask:
- Does this solve a current problem (not a hypothetical future one)?
- Can I measure the business impact in dollars or user satisfaction?
- Is this the simplest solution that actually works?
If you can’t answer all three with clear “yes” responses, you’re probably procrastinating with infrastructure.
The Business Impact Matrix
Impact Level Infrastructure Investment Business Justification Critical Core product infrastructure Directly enables revenue Important Monitoring, security basics Prevents revenue loss Nice-to-have Optimization, additional tooling Measurable efficiency gains Distraction “Learning” projects, over-engineering No clear business connection The golden rule: If you can’t explain how infrastructure work connects to revenue, user satisfaction, or compliance requirements, it’s probably a distraction.
Self-hosting can have so much gravity it detracts you from other areas and tasks… 🥲
Fix: Use managed services if possible (unless they have really painful problems and you really need to self-host them), or just reduce use of services at all. Yes, this can sound counterintuitive to self-hosters, but managed services exist so you do not have to manage them yourself.
The takeaway
Self-hosting and homelabbing can give you valuable learning experience, especially with computer networks and system administration.
However it has many pitfalls that would not let you (and others) sleep and lead to you running out of money. But they are ones with workable solutions, so you can keep learning and gaining experience.
With that said, wishing you happy self-hosting! 😄