I’m not affiliated with this in any way but saw it posted at the other place & thought fellow Lemmyzens might like to take a look.
I always find it quite hard to answer “favorite” apps as some infrastructure critical self hosted apps aren’t as sexy as others which sit front & centre so I feel they often don’t seem to get as much credit or attention (such as NGinX/DuckDNS compared to Immich/Jellyfin etc)
Hi everyone,
Like in previous years, I’m running a survey about self-hosting. The focus is on your favorite self-hosted apps, but there are plenty of other (optional) questions too. The top five app lists are free response fields, you don’t have to select the suggestions.
Link to take the survey:
https://survey.deployn.de/s/self-host-2026
More info:
The survey is anonymous. Like last year, results will be published in aggregated form. I’m currently planning to publish them in December.
It takes about 10-25 minutes.
Some of you asked for more questions in the comments. I added a lot at first, then realized it took 45 minutes to fill out properly. So I threw some out again, but there are still quite a few. The survey now has a core section that mainly covers the MVPs (your 5 favorite apps), and you can switch on other modules if you want. Almost every question is optional and can be skipped. If you answer everything at a reasonable pace, it takes around 20 minutes.
The proprietary survey tool caused new problems every year, so last year I switched to HeyForm while the survey was already running. That wasn’t ideal for my purposes either, so this year the survey runs on a new app. It should also make entering your apps faster.
It’s still easier to fill out on a desktop computer.
Thank you in advance for participating.
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself
- My MVPs: Mythtv, PocketID, Plex, Immich, Home Assistant
Self-Hoster 🏡
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Fleet: 1 device · Less than 1 TB
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Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Learning & experimenting, Customization & full control
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Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 11–20 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Cost savings, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Proxmox VE, Paperless-ngx, Immich, Jellyfin
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code Plex Brand of media server package
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 19 acronyms.
[Thread #116 for this comm, first seen 27th Sep 2026, 22:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: Outline, Home Assistant, Plex, Audiobookshelf, Caddy
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Cost savings, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Pi-hole, Plex, Radarr, Linkwarden
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 11–20 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Fun / the hobby itself
- My MVPs: Immich, Navidrome, Dockhand, Proxmox VE, Caddy
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Learning & experimenting, Cost savings
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 1 device · Less than 1 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself
- My MVPs: Nextcloud, Searxng, BentoPDF, PocketID, kutt
This survey definitely looks vibe-coded as heck lol but I hope the results will be good.
My results :)
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Immich, Baikal, Forgejo, qBitTorrent, Home Assistant
God knows I wasn’t going to put cost as a motivation… I am actively losing money running double the storage I am using and 100+ GB of RAM on a Xeon chip, but having the headroom is certainly nice and has allowed me to expand as much as I want. Getting a good deal a couple of years back before the price explosion was a huge stroke of luck. If this server ever failed I could figure out a smaller operation with more confidence.
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Learning & experimenting, Customization & full control, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: Immich, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Syncthing, Gramps Web
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Jellyfin, Sonarr, Pi-hole, Navidrome, Home Assistant
This survey is going to become our version of Spotify Wrapped isn’t it?
Top Motivation: CostThe several hundred dollars a year and hours spend is definitely worth saving that $14-30/month in subscriptions right? right?
Initial cost may be high. But I have calculated that my system. Would cost me 9 euros a month at 12tb of cloud storage. Something that I can’t achieve if I pay for cloud storage to a big man.
What brings me from clouds back to earth is current hard drives prices. Fuck AI.
Right, $14-30/m actually adds up to hundreds and is less reliable.
I know, I know super duper clouds, six nines of availability for cloud services etc., yet github (for example) fails more often then my media/git/file/print server on 10 y.o. laptop with tens of terabytes of media and data, that is less maintened and exists in a far worse conditions (comparison is incorrect but the fact stays).
$14-30/month in subscriptions is $168-360/year.
You likely spend more than that a year on what you host (I know my power alone is going to run higher than that), but the monetary cost doesn’t cover the joys of the hobby, the knowledge aquired, and the fact that your shit still works even after the Internet goes out
What is a physical device? I am a bit unsure in relation to this question.
I mean. A server is a physical device. A router is a physical device A switch is a physical device Even my zigbee lightbulbs is a physical device
Where should i draw the line?
AI Pioneer 🤖
- Fleet: More than 10 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself
