Ask HN: Self-hosting websites? Good or bad idea?

[Lesabotsy]

So I have some Saas idea I want to test out. But I don't want, nor have money to host them on a VPS or something for now. So I thought about about hosting them at home as I have an old DELL Optiplex laying around. My internet is fiber 1gb down/500mb up. What are the downside? For those who has done it, any tips? Are you satisfied?

[speedgoose]

I have done it a long time ago.

I think you will spend more on electricity than a cheap VPS at Scaleway, OVH (kimsufi), or Hetzner.

[mimixco]

When I started my company, we used to host our own stuff but I found the security aspect to be a nightmare. Unless you want to be in the business of supervising a bleeding hole to the outside world (which is what a server basically is), I'd have to recommend letting someone else do it.

[crobertsbmw]

Digital Ocean is like $5 a month. If that's too much money for you, then hosting at home is probably your best option. Downside is that you're going to spend all your time figuring out how to manage your own server.

[creatornator]

And even cheaper is Amazon Lightsail starting at $3.50/mo, pretty hard to beat. I think for the amount of time spent managing a server and DNS things at home, these options may be more desirable.

[speedgoose]

It's beaten by many European cloud providers.

3.5$ for 512mb of ram and 1 slow vcpu is not competitive at all.

[throwaway888abc]

If you have that budget constrain. Just go on.

Been running many enterprise applications in-house. in-office on variety internet providers from 10/10 to 100/100.

Your connectivity is superior.