[sdoering]

Wow. Thanks for that insight. I went the middle ground and am using a shared hosting provider with great tutorials on how to get things running.

Nextcloud was 5 minutes (or 15 if one includes setting up ssh key in the web frontend for my account). WordPress was 3 minutes, Matomo also 5 including configuration.

I know that I am using a central service and am not self hosting. But for > 13 years this setup "just works".

I had a masquerading server at home once (back in the early 2000s) and updating, securing and just maintaining it was a hassle.

So to me the current setup is stable, mostly secure (and more secure than I could make it) and balances my needs for control and stability and ease of use quite well.