What's worth self-hosting in 2026 — and what isn't?
Four years running my own stuff. Here's what I've actually concluded:
Vaultwarden is the clearest win — almost zero maintenance, Bitwarden-compatible clients everywhere, and the audit trail is entirely yours. Miniflux for RSS is similar: no algorithmic interference, no shutdown risk, runs fine on a $5 VPS. Immich is the newest addition and has genuinely surprised me — mobile sync actually works now, the ML search is useful, replaced a Google Photos subscription.
Email is the trap that gets everyone. Self-hosted email deliverability is a nightmare. Small-operator IPs get flagged constantly, SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup takes half a day and still lands in junk for some providers. I've tried twice. The ongoing maintenance isn't worth it unless you have a specific reason.
The honest trade-off: self-hosting swaps vendor risk (enshittification, price hikes, acquisitions) for operational risk (your VPS goes down at 2am, you're the only oncall). For low-stakes personal services that trade is usually fine. For anything that would cost you real time to lose access to during the day, think hard before running it yourself.
What's held up for others? Specifically things running for 2+ years without becoming a maintenance drag.
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