I think it's a pretty clear line. Self hosted means you can run it locally in your home, using a saas platform or vps is just a convenience, not a requirement.
What about FOSS SaaS alternatives that are meant for team collab? Like Plane (Jira replacement). Does that have to be ran locally at home for it to be considered "self hosted"?
Self hosted means you host it yourself. I.e. you run the software. Running on your own home machine is definitely self-hosted. Hosting it on a VPS in some datacenter still is. Running it in a cloud platform somewhere is stretching it but I'd say that sill is. SaaS definitely is not self hosting even if the software is open source. The important part is that you're the one in control of the software.
I think a VPS is acceptable because otherwise you just can't let the broader internet talk to you, then. The internet's structured that way.
I hope AI will push infra, including good-enough AI itself, dirt cheap, so that everyone has "good enough" software for themselves. Tailscale is a game changer in this regard but only the first step.
A surprisingly large number do, at least in america. They're not guaranteed to be stable, i.e. you don't "own" the IP but in practice I've found that buying a relatively high tier internet plan tends to come with IPs that change less than once a year.
This is probably considerably less true in countries with a smaller ip to population ratio e.g. india.
It's an interesting example because I think it proves the opposite point. There are places, large dense cities, where most people live in tiny apartments, and if you're having a dinner party it's not going to be inside a house.
It's perfectly reasonable and understandable to say you're hosting the party even if you don't own the physical location (see also: weddings)
Yeah, I think we need to better define this term. To an extent people, call self-hosting using your own server in your own home. But I think using a VPS from hosting provider should also be an acceptable term.
That offers a lot of convenience that will keep self-hosting out of reach of a lot of people.
"Self-hosting is the practice of running a website or service on a home server instead of a web hosting service outside of the administrator's own control."
And then basically contradicts itself in the next paragraph:
"The practice of self-hosting web services became more feasible with the development of cloud computing and virtualization technologies, which enabled users to run their own servers on remote hardware or virtual machines."
In any case, I think the generally accepted definition of self-hosting has expanded over the years to include software that you're running on rented hardware in someone else's data center.
I think the opposite. 20 years ago self hosting almost always meant "in a data centre" but as home internet got better people started to think "or maybe in my basement" and now it's swung so far that a few think if it's not in your basement it's not self hosting
Self hosting wasn’t popular nomenclature back then, but it was common for people to host web and mail on at home on DSL or even dial-up (ISDN or even analog if you were bold) 20-30 years ago.
I only use Wikipedia occasionally but this is seriously the worst article I've ever seen. It switches the definition between "running on my own hardware" and "running it in the cloud" multiple times. It's been pointed out in a discussion about the article several months ago but nobody bothered to correct it.
Which is what has been done in pieces and argued about 10000 times to make this abomination. I guarantee there is someone watching this article 24/7 that will revert it the moment you update it
There was a recent Show HN project that claimed to be 'self-hosted', and the installation included something like 6 service subscription dependencies. That's just a SaaS with more steps.
No, crazy would be owning the router and cables/satellites as well as producing your own power and having a manufacturing plant for hardware capable of running the software.
People have been running public websites off of the back of their ISPs since the 90s. I know a few today that are nothing but a Raspberry PI running Pocketbase.
It scales for the intended audience.
Self hosting doesn't mean you need to build the next AWS.
[−]tropicalhunter · 2026-10-10 Sat 13:20 UTC ·
link
I agree.
I would describe it as externally hosted yet managed specifically because someone else is most likely, whether they admit to it or not, recording some sort of logs on my service and data and that is a choice that I do not own or, in some cases, have access to.
Where is your own hardware located? A data center? Or maybe your place of residence? What if that location is compromised? Does that mean that physical ownership of the hardware is also not self hosted?
It is confusing, I agree. IMO we should have "self-running" and "self-hosting". Self-running if I provide the hardware, self-hosting if I manage it. Or swap the term, still not sure but there is a difference between you are the one maintaining it and where does it run.
I gave it a second thought and I think terms should be "self-managed" - you manage it either locally or in cloud and "self-hosted" you host it locally. Idk "self-contained" doesn't click with me, to be fair.
I would define hosting in the cloud as "self-hosting" because you perform the act of hosting that thing and thus have full control over it.
Yes it's not the same as hosting as your own hardware but I would argue that it accomplishes the same goals. The goal is to get other people out of your data. With a "service" the underlying company has every incentive to look at your data and use that to improve it's service, but when you host something yourself with a provider, it's in that providers best interest to never look at your data.
For me it all comes down to the goals of the people your are doing business with. With Cloudflare at least, their goal is to just upsell me on hosting equipment, they couldn't give a rats ass what I'm hosting on that hardware so long it's not illegal.
I think the reality is the goal posts are shifting on owning your own data, and apps. The idea that self-hosted is not on your _own_ hardware is crazy to me.
Is it a "goal post" shift or an insidious confusion? Clouds can be regulated, guard-railed, censored, spied on. Since your local computer is also just "cloud," it too can be regulated. This makes the mental-model change: what used to be "my personal thing" now becomes "a thing in the common network". That's different; it represents different values.
I hope AI will push infra, including good-enough AI itself, dirt cheap, so that everyone has "good enough" software for themselves. Tailscale is a game changer in this regard but only the first step.
This is probably considerably less true in countries with a smaller ip to population ratio e.g. india.
the complaint is the communication, not the literal words. because the title conflicts with itself, it causes confusion.
for example, saying, "come join us. I'm hosting a dinner party. It's at this restaurant," would be similar.
It's perfectly reasonable and understandable to say you're hosting the party even if you don't own the physical location (see also: weddings)
If the software can be switched to a rented or purchased hardware (I do not want Cloudflare's offering) then it is "self-host-able" IMO.
I think there are open source Cloudflare alternative hosting software.
The first sentence states:
"Self-hosting is the practice of running a website or service on a home server instead of a web hosting service outside of the administrator's own control."
And then basically contradicts itself in the next paragraph:
"The practice of self-hosting web services became more feasible with the development of cloud computing and virtualization technologies, which enabled users to run their own servers on remote hardware or virtual machines."
In any case, I think the generally accepted definition of self-hosting has expanded over the years to include software that you're running on rented hardware in someone else's data center.
It scales for the intended audience.
Self hosting doesn't mean you need to build the next AWS.
I would describe it as externally hosted yet managed specifically because someone else is most likely, whether they admit to it or not, recording some sort of logs on my service and data and that is a choice that I do not own or, in some cases, have access to.
If someone else can fat finger a delete, it’s not self hosted.
Whether you use the cloud, or a vps, or a dedicated bare metal server, or your own equipment at home is all self hosting.
Yes it's not the same as hosting as your own hardware but I would argue that it accomplishes the same goals. The goal is to get other people out of your data. With a "service" the underlying company has every incentive to look at your data and use that to improve it's service, but when you host something yourself with a provider, it's in that providers best interest to never look at your data.
For me it all comes down to the goals of the people your are doing business with. With Cloudflare at least, their goal is to just upsell me on hosting equipment, they couldn't give a rats ass what I'm hosting on that hardware so long it's not illegal.
You can self-host on-prem or in the cloud.
(You can manage it, the resources, replace the software, etc.)