Self Hosting is Not Always the Answer
Cloud based software (examples: blogs, file sharing, photo sharing) requires a host.... you can either use someone else's setup, and perhaps pay them a small subscription fee, or you can self-host.
There are benefits of both. Many people enjoy the challenge of self-hosting. You control your own environment and, more importantly, data. Your intellectual-property sits where you decide and is not consumed and abused by large corporates.
Self-hosting techniques can involve a computer in your own home, or renting private space on a cloud host. Either way, it is still self-hosting in the sense that you control access to your own digital space.
Sounds perfect. Why don't we all self-host?
Self-hosting negatives
You need some technical experience to setup a host and run software on it. Some of us don't have the skills, or can't be bothered with the responsibility.
Assuming you get setup and running, you need to ensure you keep up-to-date with software versions, and security patches. These are important to the stability and safety of your data.
Amazingly, some might miss this one -- backups! You are responsible for backing up your data. If it all goes pear-shaped one day, maybe during a software update, you want to be confident you have not lost everything and can recover. An important element of taking backups is also regularly testing those for integrity.
Your Internet connection at home is never as fast as those on the world wide web. Generally, home broadband connections are designed for fast downloads -- that's the big number all the ISPs excite you with when they want you to sign up. If you're self-hosting, the upload speed is important too -- this dictates how fast your home server can send data up to the internet. Generally this is slow as we do far less of it. You might have a 100MB connection (which is the download speed) but only a 16MB Upload. Big difference when hosting at home.
Hosting generally needs a fixed IP address. What's that? Think of an IP address as a unique number for your connection on the internet. When you go to a website (using a name) it uses a big phone book on the Internet (DNS) to translate that into a number. It's irrelevant to you, but it's how everyone/thing finds resources on the internet. At home you usually have an ever-changing (dynamic) IP address as it's not important for home use. A fixed IP is important if you self-host at home. There are ways around it, but an added complication.
Opening up to other users
It sounds exciting? Self-host and then let other users access your new server software too!
Not so fast. There are many added responsibilities to this:
- backups and security updates become even more critical as you have other people's data.
- If you are hosting at home, it will add strain on your own broadband connection, potentially slowing you down at home.
- People expect access to the service 24 hours a day. You need to leave the server running, so there are costs for electricity. What if you have a power failure? What if you are away from home, and something fails?
- You are legally obliged to have a raft of policies when handling other people's data. The owner needs to understand how you will store their data, how you will process it, and where. Data Protection and terms and conditions are huge. You basically need to protect yourself from being sued by a disgruntled user.
Conclusion
None of the above negatives are insurmountable. Thousands of individuals self-host, and many open it to the public.
It just takes time, careful consideration, and awareness of your responsibilities.
Happy hosting.
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