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There's also https://www.pikapods.com/ that offers to host it for you in a simplified manner if you don't wont all the server hassle.
When you’re ready to reduce prices and increase privacy, take a look at a tiny (like t3a.micro or .nano) ec2 instance that forwards to/from your “real” server at home which can be beefier. The home server maintains a vpn connection to the ec2 instance. you also need to configure nat and port forwarding on both sides so you’ll need to get your hands dirty with nftables/netfilter (probably a night or two of pain realistically).
Once it’s set up and working and you can get your monthly spend down to $3-$4 (I pay up front for three years of ec2 credits). You need your own hardware but a used nuc for example is pretty cheap and adding storage is a matter of buying an external usb hard drive.
And if you stick to https/tls (via letsencrypt) the Amazon forwarding instance can’t see what’s in your traffic (just which ips are visiting you and when).
(You could obviously cut Amazon out entirely if you’re comfortable hosting directly from your home ip but I never wanted to deal with the potential isp headaches.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, Scaleway is European, with datacenters in France, Amsterdam and Warsaw.
FYI for anyone in the US, this means they're going to ask you for some sensitive information like a copy of your passport. Even worse, they're probably going to wait until after you've given them all your registration details, including your credit card information, to ask for it.
Your approach is nice and easy and sensible. I personally preferred hetzner to linode (which has a history of bad security) but I imagine the minimum price is higher. When you’re ready to reduce prices and increase privacy, take a look at a tiny (like t3a.micro or .nano) ec2 instance that forwards to/from your “real” server at home which can be beefier. The home server maintains a vpn connection to the ec2 instance.…
So I would probably avoid Amazon just because many of their services charge for data out. It isn't out, but it's a variable for you, and you probaly want something that's flat per month. Cheapest you are going to get with somewhat reliable service is either going to be Hetzner or BuyVM. Hetzner is better for someone who doesn't want to tinker, BuyVM for those who do (BuyVM is a little less reliable, but you can set it up cheaper if you are willing to do a little bit of manual work with shell commands).
Secondly, I'd suggest you host this through Cloudron. It helps you handle automatic security updates and backups. It's very nice, and worth paying for, although it's a little pricey for individuals.
Third, with email, you can host it yourself (in fact Cloudron has this built in), but I'm going to recommend against it, or at least recommend that you pipe important emails through another service like Fastmail. Let me explain why. There's going to be some point after hosting for 5 years, where your server is going to go down. Now email will be fine, it's built to deal with cases where servers go down, but... we rely so much on email right now, that it's going to really suck to have it down. So by all means, have your personal email come to the server, but keep anything that you can't do without running on a managed service. You can pipe it through your own domain, and set up automatic forwarding, but it's going to be a little better to run important stuff through someone else's server, imho.
Just my two (or three, I guess) cents.
That's a reasonable plan. And I 100% agree that controlling your data is preferable to having it mined. What frustrates me, and why I don't do it any more, is we don't have a manageable story for most things. In many cases there's a good recipe you can follow to stand up the basic service. But hardening, security patching, etc. aren't covered. You have to come up with your own solution to make sure it's up, etc. On t…
The experience needs to be more like installing an app on a phone or a game on a console and with automated backups and easy restore. Self hosting will never come back if we are still expecting people to manage servers like it’s 1985. I think part of the problem is that this is exactly the kind of stuff that is not fun. It’s that boring middle layer between the OS and apps. Compounding the problem is the fact that th…
It exists: https://yunohost.org/#/. Install the distro, and then it's all clickety-clicks for all your apps (which are softwares like nextcloud, cryptpad, bitwarden, bitter, etc..)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The experience needs to be more like installing an app on a phone or a game on a console and with automated backups and easy restore. Self hosting will never come back if we are still expecting people to manage servers like it’s 1985. I think part of the problem is that this is exactly the kind of stuff that is not fun. It’s that boring middle layer between the OS and apps. Compounding the problem is the fact that th…
> The experience needs to be more like installing an app on a phone or a game on a console and with automated backups and easy restore. Self hosting will never come back if we are still expecting people to manage servers like it’s 1985. It exists: https://yunohost.org/#/ . Install the distro, and then it's all clickety-clicks for all your apps (which are softwares like nextcloud, cryptpad, bitwarden, bitter, etc..)
The backup and restore also has to be continuous and seamless.
Your approach is nice and easy and sensible. I personally preferred hetzner to linode (which has a history of bad security) but I imagine the minimum price is higher. When you’re ready to reduce prices and increase privacy, take a look at a tiny (like t3a.micro or .nano) ec2 instance that forwards to/from your “real” server at home which can be beefier. The home server maintains a vpn connection to the ec2 instance.…
You could simplify substantially by simply using the ec2 instance as a reverse proxy (well, that’s simpler to me, at least, as someone much more familiar with reverse proxies).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, Scaleway is European, with datacenters in France, Amsterdam and Warsaw.
FYI for anyone in the US, this means they're going to ask you for some sensitive information like a copy of your passport. Even worse, they're probably going to wait until after you've given them all your registration details, including your credit card information, to ask for it.