I’m not affiliated with this in any way but saw it posted at the other place & thought fellow Lemmyzens might like to take a look.
I always find it quite hard to answer “favorite” apps as some infrastructure critical self hosted apps aren’t as sexy as others which sit front & centre so I feel they often don’t seem to get as much credit or attention (such as NGinX/DuckDNS compared to Immich/Jellyfin etc)
Hi everyone,
Like in previous years, I’m running a survey about self-hosting. The focus is on your favorite self-hosted apps, but there are plenty of other (optional) questions too. The top five app lists are free response fields, you don’t have to select the suggestions.
Link to take the survey:
https://survey.deployn.de/s/self-host-2026
More info:
The survey is anonymous. Like last year, results will be published in aggregated form. I’m currently planning to publish them in December.
It takes about 10-25 minutes.
Some of you asked for more questions in the comments. I added a lot at first, then realized it took 45 minutes to fill out properly. So I threw some out again, but there are still quite a few. The survey now has a core section that mainly covers the MVPs (your 5 favorite apps), and you can switch on other modules if you want. Almost every question is optional and can be skipped. If you answer everything at a reasonable pace, it takes around 20 minutes.
The proprietary survey tool caused new problems every year, so last year I switched to HeyForm while the survey was already running. That wasn’t ideal for my purposes either, so this year the survey runs on a new app. It should also make entering your apps faster.
It’s still easier to fill out on a desktop computer.
Thank you in advance for participating.
Top Motivation: CostThe several hundred dollars a year and hours spend is definitely worth saving that $14-30/month in subscriptions right? right?
My wife spent about $130 for a year subscription to a service that she figured would always have her favorite show on it, because they own that show. Then like 10 seasons of it left for an exclusivity deal on another service. This was a contributing factor to pushing me into self hosting. Some of it is saving money, but some of it is also making sure you actually got what you paid for.
$14-30/month in subscriptions is $168-360/year.
You likely spend more than that a year on what you host (I know my power alone is going to run higher than that), but the monetary cost doesn’t cover the joys of the hobby, the knowledge aquired, and the fact that your shit still works even after the Internet goes out
I wanted to do the survey, but at some point the ui is barely understandable (#10 or so) and I gave up shortly after. And that’s from a nerd.
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Jellyfin, Sonarr, Pi-hole, Navidrome, Home Assistant
This survey is going to become our version of Spotify Wrapped isn’t it?
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 6–10 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Fun / the hobby itself, Customization & full control, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Immich, PeerTube, Ghost, Actual Budget, Home Assistant
I create videos for YouTube/PeerTube and backup all of the raw footage. The actual storage count is currently 130TB in my main NAS with about 250TB for an offsite cold storage backup (as most of my data doesn’t change much) and on-site live-ish backup. I also have the benefit of being able to get reputable used commercial grade HDDs from work for $10/TB, even right now, it makes it way too easy. Shameless plug of my PeerTube instance: https://joeltube.com/ or @JoelKalich on YouTube.
Somehow veteran isn’t the right word. Veteran kind of implies you have learned along the way, yet I keep making the same mistakes
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Cost savings
- My MVPs: Immich, Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr
I think “$hell-shocked” might work.
AI Pioneer 🤖
- Fleet: More than 10 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself
Data Hoarder 💾
- Fleet: 1 device · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Customization & full control
- My MVPs: Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Home Assistant, Immich
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 5–10 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Fun / the hobby itself, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: Outline, Home Assistant, Plex, Audiobookshelf, Caddy
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 1 device · 11–20 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Privacy & data ownership, Learning & experimenting
- My MVPs: Vaultwarden, Nextcloud, Firefly III, Caddy, Proxmox Backup Server
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 1–4 TB
- Motivation: Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions, Learning & experimenting, Privacy & data ownership
- My MVPs: Actual Budget, Baikal, Memos, Termix, Jellyfin
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Fun / the hobby itself, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Jellyfin, Caddy, Pi-hole, Syncthing, Rsync
Homelab Veteran ⚡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Cost savings, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Pi-hole, Plex, Radarr, Linkwarden
Fleet Commander 🚀
- Fleet: More than 10 devices · 21–50 TB
- Motivation: Learning & experimenting, Cost savings, Independence from Big Tech & subscriptions
- My MVPs: Home Assistant, Audiobookshelf, Jellyfin, Pangolin, Portainer
AI Pioneer 🤖
- Fleet: 2–3 devices · More than 50 TB
- Motivation: Fun / the hobby itself, Privacy & data ownership, Learning & experimenting
- My MVPs: Netbird, Open WebUI, Forgejo, Traefik, Authentik
Self-Hoster 🏡
- Fleet: 4–5 devices · 11–20 TB
- Motivation: Privacy & data ownership, Cost savings, Fun / the hobby itself
- My MVPs: Emby, AdGuard Home
