Self-Hosting Cost Savings¶
The economic core of digital sovereignty: stop renting your software, start owning your stack. Every self-hosted app on the stack-sovereignty-box replaces a recurring SaaS bill with a share of one flat VPS cost.
The headline swap¶
A training/webinar business renting a typical toolchain — n8n + Supabase + BBB + FreshBooks + ClickUp + Salesforce — runs roughly $375/mo. Owned on one VPS (plus a dedicated video box) lands near $68/mo — about 5.5× cheaper (~$3,700/yr saved), and you own it.
Per-app examples¶
| Self-hosted app | Replaces | Rough rent |
|---|---|---|
| immich | Google Photos | ~$10/mo |
| nextcloud | Dropbox / Google Workspace | ~$12/mo+ |
| uptime-kuma | Pingdom / UptimeRobot | ~$15/mo |
| caddy | Managed SSL / load balancer | varies |
| tailscale | Legacy VPN appliance | free personal |
| ollama | Per-token LLM API (for fit workloads) | usage-based |
The decision frame¶
- Does it kill a bill or a real chore? If not, it's a toy.
- Is it popular and maintained? (So your agent can fix issues.)
- Is it a good first pick? (Single container, clear UI.)
- Install one, verify, then decide on the next — don't bulk-install.
Related¶
- stack-sovereignty-box — the live owned stack
- immich · nextcloud · uptime-kuma — concrete swaps
- docker-compose — the pattern that makes it manageable