Self-hosting is an exciting journey that lets you explore new tools and take control of your digital life. The possibilities are endless, and there’s always something new to discover. Over the years, I’ve tried countless self-hosted tools, experimenting with different setups and use cases. While I love testing out new options, there are five tools that I always come back to.
Vaultwarden
Password managers are an essential tool in today’s digital world, making online surfing easier and far more secure. Vaultwarden is a Bitwarden alternative that’s easy to host, lightweight, and fully compatible with the official Bitwarden apps
By self-hosting Vaultwarden, you eliminate concerns about cloud data breaches or third-party vulnerabilities. Your sensitive information stays private and secure, giving you complete ownership of your digital identity. For anyone serious about safeguarding their online life, Vaultwarden is a must-have tool in your self-hosting arsenal.
Paperless
Managing documents can be a hassle, but self-hosting a tool like Paperless-ngx transforms the way you handle paperwork. Paperless is a document management system that allows you to securely store, organize, and retrieve all your important files in one place. One of its standout features is the ability to automatically archive email attachments. What truly sets Paperless apart is its powerful OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities. It can scan and extract text from your files, making even scanned PDFs fully searchable. This ensures you can quickly find exactly what you need, even in a large archive of documents.
This tool has saved me countless times when I needed a specific document in a hurry. The Paperparrot iPhone app makes uploading documents to Paperless effortless and incredibly convenient.
Immich
Ok, I might be biased here because I contributed some code to this project in its early stage. But I LOVE Immich.
Immich is a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos, giving you full control over your photo and video library. With its great mobile app for iOS and Android, it features automatic backups, easy organization, and a sleek interface.
Pictures and videos can be organized in albums, displayed on a map based on their EXIF gelocation and shared with other users or by link.
It also has local AI features builtin like a semantic search and face recognition.
Since I started using Immich, I’ve fallen in love with going through my photos all over again. Browsing my photo library now feels like reliving the moments, not just scrolling through clutter—and I didn’t realize how much I missed that. Immich has truly brought the joy back to revisiting my memories.
Affine
I searched many years for the perfect note taking software. After weeks of usage, AFFiNE is still my favourite software for this task.
Especially the easy-to-use yet feature rich user interface make this software a joy to use. Since it's still in very active development (as of today in version 0.19.0) you can look forward to new features regularly.
Traccar
Even though it might not be useful to everyone, I still want to mention Traccar since it's one of the tools I use the most.
Traccar is a self-hosted alternative to Google Location History, offering a private and reliable way to track your movements over time. By hosting it on your own server, you retain full control of your location data, free from the privacy concerns of big tech services.
You know that feeling when you can’t quite remember what you did last weekend? Or when you’re trying to recall the date of your last doctor’s appointment? With Traccar, you don’t have to guess anymore. It keeps a detailed log of your location history, making it easy to revisit your past activities or track patterns in your daily life.
Honorable Mentions
These tools are the ones I probably use most often and could hardly life without. However, there are still plenty of applications I use regularly that deserve a mention:
- Nextcloud for file sharing and calendar hosting
- Gitea for source code management
- HomeAssistant for smart home control
- Miniflux for news reading
- Audiobookshelf for audiobook and podcast management
