
Deploy-your-own-SaaS: “only yours” cloud services for everyday needs - DyslexicAtheist
https://github.com/Atarity/deploy-your-own-saas
======
dangus
It's a nice list of really useful services.

However, it should also be pointed out that it's also a deploy-your-own-
unpaid-system-administrator-job. A lot of the value in SaaS products is the
service provided of someone else maintaining it. The maintenance and security
patching for running all this stuff, especially on the open Internet, that
would quickly become a part time job.

So, I'd say that for most people with a limited time budget, it's worth the
cost to simply find a high quality, paid SaaS provider for many of these
services.

An example on from list: deploying your own email server and depending on it
for your important communications is something that almost nobody should
attempt on their own. Instead, most people should look to migrate from free
providers that could do things like close your account/delete your data at any
time, to paid ones that treat you like a paying customer.

~~~
bisby
"Host your own" isn't about simplicity or cost necessarily. For me, it's about
controlling data.

I have my own media server, because when netflix removes friends, ill still be
able to watch it. sure that means i have to buy the box set of friends for
like 100$, which is 10 months of netflix into a single show. but i never have
to worry about that going away. I'd rather have a raspberry pi with a webcam
with motionEye letting me monitor my house than feeding private data into a
company a dont trust.

This is also a hobby for me that has benefited me in my job on multiple
occasions, and I only do it for services that I'm ok with downtime on (I've
outsourced my email even though that's the data I would love to control the
most, I'm not going to mess around with downtime on that). I absolutely
wouldn't recommend any of these things for my grandma.

Also, "unpaid system administrator job" can be a bit of an extreme analogy. I
do spend non-zero time working on these things... but because I was using this
as a way to practice actual system admin things, they are generally set up for
stability. there isn't much work to put into it after setup. Unchanged
software rarely just suddenly starts breaking for no reason, especially when
the traffic on it is low because there are only 2 people using the service.
(again, I'm aware that self hosting email has all sorts of "you need to keep
spam filter stuff up to date" weirdness, but I wouldn't advocate for that).

Other than email, anything on this list would be great for someone who wants
to keep data in home, as long as they know the scope of how much free time
they have vs their desired reliability.

~~~
x__x
"I have my own media server"

Is this accessible online, or just at your house?

~~~
bisby
In home. Wife has a lot of movies, and it's just to avoid having to walk to
the movie closet and search through stacks on stacks of DVDs. Not doing any
high seas or movie sharing. Just convenience and a fun project.

Also a prime example of a "downtime not a big deal" project. If it breaks, we
just go back to the movie closet, and its no less convenient than how we used
to do things (or just watch actual Netflix).

------
napcae
There is also this collection of self hosted services:
[https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-
selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

~~~
yread
Does anyone know a self hosted licensing server? A sevice that software could
call with a license key and some stats, and it would verify the license, the
number of users or whatever and log the stats.

~~~
zelon88
There are on-prem options for developers to build DRM, if that's what you're
asking. Of course the software has to be built to utilize the license server.
CodeMeter comes to mind.

------
franky47
See also Framasoft [1] which has a collection of self-hostable free software
services to replace most of Google (and other walled garden companies)
products.

[1] [https://framasoft.org/en/](https://framasoft.org/en/)

------
smashah
Home assistant's add-on store has a lot of these ready to go.

[https://community.home-assistant.io/tags/hassio-
repository](https://community.home-assistant.io/tags/hassio-repository)

~~~
OJFord
I didn't know HA had plugins like this, seems weird, HA itself is one of these
things, not some sort of parent thing to which they're deployed.

That's how I see it anyway.

~~~
organsnyder
Depends on how you're running it. When I was running hass.io on a RaPi, I used
a few of those plugins (including PiHole). Now that I'm running HA in a VM on
a bigger machine, it makes more sense to run those services as separate VMs
alongside it.

~~~
hunter2_
I've been trying to decide between these options myself. I was never happy
with the slow restarts and potential for microSD failure when I ran HA on a
RaPi3 (years ago, legacy AIO on stock Raspbian) so I haven't kept up with it
and now want to start from scratch on something like a NUC. Do I make Hass.io
a VM along side other VMs for PiHole, my LAMP website, etc? It will be idle so
much that low power/heat during idle is significantly important, but I love
the simplicity of reverting an isolated service back to a snapshot after I
break it.

I suspect a single OS on metal with each of these in a Docker container would
be more efficient, but I haven't played with containers before.

~~~
organsnyder
I have a single machine running FreeNAS that's running all of my home services
at the moment (I know it's not the best hypervisor, but I wanted my NAS on
bare metal and I can't justify a separate dedicated server). I have Ubuntu
running in a VM running Docker, and installed Home Assistant using the
official instructions for this setup[1].

PiHole is so light-weight and relatively low-risk, you could easily run it on
the same VM as Home Assistant if you'd like. I keep separate VMs for
everything out of habit. I would isolate the LAMP site as much as possible,
especially if it's publicly available—potentially even keeping it off of the
same network as everything else.

[1] [https://www.home-
assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/](https://www.home-
assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/)

------
art4ur
It's easy to forget that sometimes you don't really need to host things. I
used to run a Next Cloud server for syncing my documents, contacts, and
calendar with all my devices. I'd rarely use a device that was not mine to
access those things. I've switched to Syncthing
([https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)) and DecSync
([https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync](https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync))
and that's replaced 95% of what Next Cloud did for me.

Your use case might differ from mine quite a bit, but for me it was the best
way to go. No server to babysit and everything "Just Works™".

~~~
ShamelessC
Do you mean you switched to a hosted Syncthing?

I'm looking into Nextcloud and syncthing. A lot of people suggested Nextcloud.
What do you like better about syncthing?

~~~
DenseComet
Syncthing is not a hosted service, rather its a p2p way to sync files and
other things between your devices. It relies on the bittorrent protocol, so
you don't need to have a central server. What you can do though, is install it
on a NAS as well, so that files are also synced to a central location.

------
thequailman
Is there really a market for a self hosted B2C SaaS options? Would it be
enough of a differentiator to drive business away from competitors?

~~~
zelon88
I think so. I literally will not look at most services unless there is an on-
prem option. To the extent where I will regularly design my own solution
instead of deploying something Cloud based.

~~~
thequailman
How turn key do you expect the self hosted option to be? If it contains a lot
of other software like SQL and Redis, would you be comfortable installing it
or would you expect the option to bundle it in some kind of installer? Would
you be OK with using a container, or would you want binaries?

~~~
d0100
In my dream world, all open source software would consist of a single binary
and the only third party need would be a DB (preferentially Postgres or
MySQL).

Must be why I like Go so much

~~~
SanchoPanda
I share your dream world. Sadly I never even come close to carrying out it out
when I build a small thing for myself.

------
djsumdog
I wrote this a while back to build and run my own apps in containers:

[https://github.com/sumdog/bee2](https://github.com/sumdog/bee2)

It's not really ready for general use, but I'm still glad I wrote it for
myself. It hits all my use cases, taught me a lot about the Docker Engine API
and helps me put up new self-hosted stuff really quickly. I might use it to
deploy some stuff from this list.

------
bullen
Or you just make your own HTTP app server with integrated distributed JSON
database and self host on a raspberry cluster:

[https://github.com/tinspin/rupy](https://github.com/tinspin/rupy)

~~~
triangleman
So this is sort of like a barebones mongo db? Looks very cool.

~~~
bullen
It's inverted, I put the db on the app server so it talks HTTP natively; but
the app server is also non-blocking async. concurrent so it's not only a toy.

I call it Joint Parallel, because that's the best term to describe that many
cores can co-operate on the same memory at the "same time".

------
kemenaran
For your self-hosted SaaS needs, Yunohost is awesome.

One-click install of many apps and services – but more impressively one-click
upgrades as well. Nice, user-friendly, very little maintenance required. Self-
hosting for people who don’t want to do system administration.

I’ve been running a Yunohost server for the past three years, adding and
removing various services on the fly. Love to use it, and the great work of
people behind this.

[https://yunohost.org](https://yunohost.org)

~~~
iN7h33nD
Same here. I don't use any of the yunhost apps though. Instead I use docker
images and the redirect community yunhost app to route to them. Eventually I
want to run yunhost itself in a docker container. Regardless it has been Rock
solid for me for about three years as well

------
indymike
I love these lists. That said, it reminds me of the apps that come with
inexpensive Cpanel type hosting where many of the same apps are one-click
installs. Would be awesome if static ips for home were easier & cheaper.

~~~
gramakri
cpanel can only handle PHP apps. I think Cloudron is an alternative for modern
web apps which are written in various languages as it uses Docker internally.

------
DaniAkash
It was awesome until I realized I had to deploy them on AWS or GCP

~~~
Legogris
Where did you get that idea? Anything here should run fine on bare-metal.

------
techindex
Something similar that I've been working on:

[https://selfhostedsource.tech](https://selfhostedsource.tech)

------
dalacv
Maxapex

------
marknadal
Could you also add "Deploy Your Own Firebase"?

Our project ( [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) )
gets 1M+ downloads a month and can be self-hosted easily with a 1-click deploy
into production.

Will try to make a PR when I get to my laptop. :)

