I don’t have a home server yet but I’m exploring and sometimes I get confused about some posts here.
For example I saw a post asking for recommendation for a “self hosted budget management app”. Can’t you just install this type of app to your phone or pc? What’s the purpose here, will you host it and access it from a browser? Or do you only want to backup its data to your server?
I hope I don’t sound stupid please enlighten me.
You can still self-host on a rented VPS. And unless you have a managed VPS, then you’re still responsible for the security, and managed hosting is far too restrictive in terms of what you can do. It’s just up to you to decide if you trust that company to host your box.
And running one at home is cheap as hell.
This is exactly why I host my own stuff. I know how to tighten up the security to the point where it’s just as safe as it would be sitting on some other companies’ system, and I don’t have to worry about what they’re doing with my data, or a data breach. Seen too many companies that are lax on security (such as LastPass).
I throw extra encryption in place when means even if someone were to be able to gain physical access; they’ve got a hell of a brute force to go through just to break one part.