I wrote a free, no-BS guide for developers who want to self-host their own dev tools instead of paying for SaaS subscriptions.
What it covers:
- Initial server setup and security hardening (SSH keys, UFW, fail2ban)
- Setting up Nginx as a reverse proxy
- Self-hosting 7 specific services: uptime monitor, SSL checker, website change detector, API toolkit, QR generator, and more
- Backup strategies
- Full cost breakdown ($5/month total)
Why I wrote it: I was spending $150+/month on various dev tools and monitoring services. Most of them are trivially simple to self-host. The guide walks through everything step by step, no prior sysadmin experience needed.
Link: The No-BS Self-Hosting Guide for Developers (2026)
It is completely free, no email gate, no signup required. Just the guide.
Feedback welcome — what services would you add to the stack?
I’m not a dev to need these tools, but this is beautiful. A simple guide with an elegant welcome page, right under IP address, so even the greedy registrars and DNS hosters don’t get a buck.
This is the Internet at its self-hosted beauty.
Thank you! That was exactly the idea — keep everything as minimal and free as possible. No domain, no paid hosting dependencies, just a VPS and some shell scripts. Glad it resonated even if the tools aren’t your daily drivers.
Had no idea about the Oracle Cloud thing. Thanks for sharing
Yeah, Oracle’s free tier is genuinely great for this kind of thing — ARM instances with up to 24GB RAM for free. The only catch is availability can be spotty in popular regions. If you get a
Out of capacityerror, just keep trying at off-peak hours.
