Self-hosting side projects - Pro & Cons?

Don't do it man, I have even completely switched to a serverless config. I don't know how you manage your side projects but I quite often take a long break from working on them 3-6 months, I really hated SSH-ing into my VPS and not being able to figure out how I set things up this time and what kind of quirky things were necessary to keep it running. Only one of my side projects is still running on a VPS because it was absolutely necessary. I can't imagine having to run it on a dusty NAS in my own home, I really think the amount of money you save will be minuscule compared to the extra labor you need to fix unexpected bugs and set it up properly & stable. Curious about your thoughts!

Don't. You'll probably be 'saving' something like $5 a month against VPS, one issue with connectivity, changed ip, someone cutting of power and you regret your decision.

Another aspect is that it will probably cost you more time to set it up and maintain it, so for that $5 you'll buy yourself a couple of hours each week that you can spent on your side project.

Unless your project requires a custom server that can't be implemented in any of the usual web platforms (and even then, there are managed hosts that allow you to run custom binary servers) hosting it yourself is lose-lose. Even running from a VPS is lose-lose.

There are a large number of reasons for this, but the main one is that system administration is a fairly serious full time job. Vulnerabilities for various parts of the stack pop up multiple times a day and you need to keep on top of them rain, hail or shine. If you're not willing to do this, you have to be prepared for the machine you're hosting from to be compromised.

I wouldn't do it. If you expect to grow you also want to be able to scale, easily. Which I see as a problem if you have self hosting.

I also suspect there is more work involved to solving all the things related to sold hosting rather than using another system directly.

Well... It's seems that everyone agree on the answer : NOPE, let's not do that :-D

The ability to scale is not a priority for me (I learnt it here), but you pointed out the amount of time & work required to keep it running, so I'm definitely convinced.

Thanks !

Hello,
I think unless your project has some special dependency that would cost you a lot if you were using a hosted solution, it's better to leave the server setup and management to the cloud providers. I would not recommend spend your precious time figuring out the server config.

Google and Amazon provide free tiers. Digital droplets start from $5. You could also look into Firebase as your backend and if your data is not strictly relational.

If you start seeing scaling issues with your cloud, it would be a sign of a successful startup worth investing time to migrate to a more mature stack.

~ Cheers!

I'd do it only as a learning exercise. If you're trying to actually do what's best for your side project, utilize a service 100%.

I've almost always used Heroku or Digital Ocean (or some other VPS like linode) when hosting side projects. I suggest starting with something simple. You can even get $100 of free DO credit if you're new to DO, and AWS also offers free credit. Plus, you get the experience of working with them and their robust infrastructure.

Heroku is probably the easiest thing to run on. Just git push and you're done. Don't have to worry about devops or reliability.

Unless you're really strapped for cash, don't do it. You can spin up a cheap VPS for $5-25/mo that should do everything you need. Alternatively, you can run a minimal Heroku setup for under $50/mo if you want to save some time and effort. Fussing over hosting isn't worth your time.

Not worth it. You are from France, so go with Scaleway and their bare-metal series (cheap as hell), Hetnzer and their easily scalable cloud (so you can keep all projects on one VPS and scale as needed), or use Google Cloud 1 year free coupon.
If you are tempted you can also go for Digital Ocean offering or Vultr. They also scale quite easily. Vultr offers $2,5/mo server in New Jersey location - you can use that to build your side project, play with the stack, without screwing your main environment on $5/10mo VPS.

It's hard to say without knowing the requirements of your side projects, but in general if they are used by other people I would use a VPS, they start very cheap, and more reliable than an home hosted NAS. On the other side if you are the only user of your projects a NAS can work well initially.