Many consider commercial VPNs as the all-in-one solution for accessing geo-locked websites and browsing anonymously. That’s far from true. The bold promises of total privacy, anonymity, and better speeds from VPN providers look great on their website or promotions. Eventually, you get tired of the slow speeds and are baffled about how websites and services still manage to track you.

The VPN services let you access the region-locked websites from your home, but you can’t access your home network when you’re away. The commercial VPN providers primarily cater to outbound traffic usage. If you want to access your home lab on your home network, you’ll have to use services like Tailscale, ZeroTier, or Netbird. Here are the reasons why running your own VPN server is suitable instead of subscribing to a VPN provider.

Bid adieu to hefty subscription fees

Cut down or trim them significantly

Commercial VPN subscriptions are expensive. Many get smitten by the attractive pricing breakdowns (dollars per month) and subscribe for a couple of years. And when they forget to renew the subscription, they charge a hefty fee after the promotional period expires. By running your own VPN server, you can take yet another subscription off your budget.

You can select an affordable VPS (Virtual Private Server) provider to deploy a VPS based on an Ubuntu server to run VPN software such as WireGuard, OpenVPN, or Pangolin. Just like my colleague, Joe Rice-Jones, deployed a VPN on a VPS to access his home lab from anywhere. You need to opt for a machine with at least 1GB of RAM and 1 CPU core from several providers, such as OVHcloud, RackNerd, Vultr, Kimsufi, and others, to name a few.

Exercise data control and prevent third-party logging

You can handle all the activity logs

The commercial VPN providers aggressively promote their services with a promise that they’ll never log your activities. While most of them trumpet the “no-logs” policy, they still record the server usage, log connection timestamps, and websites you visit. Privacy-conscious users and those running development environments at home, your own VPN server hands you data control.

You get to install, manage, and access the VPN software, as well as the activity logs generated to control your data. You can audit those logs and continue fine-tuning your own VPN setup to match your needs. No unknown or third-party providers can access your browsing habits or DNS queries. Typically, you could use Tailscale for easy setup and control if you aren't concerned about masking the traffic.

Secure access to your home network

Remotely use NAS, media servers, and other self-hosted apps

You can’t access the files, NAS, media servers, file sharing, and self-hosted apps since most VPN providers are designed for outbound traffic only. Some tricky workarounds involve port forwarding, but only select VPN providers support it. Inadvertently, you’ll have to go through hoops to set up separate tunnels to access your homelab when away from home.

Running your own VPN server on a VPS lets you securely and remotely access your home lab and self-hosted apps with reverse proxy (dashboards, Grafana, Home Assistant) and TCP tunnels (SSH, RDP, SMB, Syncthing). You can exercise full control over the routing, tunneling, and authentication. One of the best parts is that you don’t need to open any ports on your router. Also, configuring Cloudflare as the DNS resolver for the domain helps prevent DNS leaks to ISPs or other third-party resolver services.

Avoid traffic congestion and relatively better speeds

Less crowded and faster connections

Setting up your own VPN server means only you and your family or friends get to use it. You don’t have to experience any speed throttling. To access websites or services in a specific region, you can deploy the VPS in the same region or geographically to reduce potential latency. However, the speeds are also dependent on your network quality, which is also true while using a VPN service.

With your VPN subscription, you share the resources with thousands of users trying to access different websites and services simultaneously. That’s why you might have experienced slow speeds or throttling when gaming, media streaming, or using other services that require consistent performance.

Dedicated and self-manageable digital identity

Freedom from shared IP bans

One of the pitfalls of using commercial VPNs is that the assigned IP addresses are banned from using popular services like Netflix, Hulu, and others. While it isn’t your fault, you’ll need to change the location in a region to try accessing geo-locked services. However, VPN service providers offer a dynamic pool of IPs and rotate the address often, so you rarely experience a knee-jerk reaction while browsing.

With your own VPN server set up with a VPS, you would be the only one using that IP. So it’s unlikely to land on a blacklist known for spamming or scraping. Also, since your IP doesn’t belong to a commercial VPN pool, it appears cleaner and isn’t flagged. That said, you’re still responsible for the IP address, including rotating IP addresses using proxy servers. If abused, it may get flagged by banking or shopping services.

Building your VPN arsenal for freedom and flexibility

Running your own VPN server lets you access your home network and also other region-specific sites comfortably. There’s no sharing of resources or VPN pools involved, leading to better speeds. That said, setting up your own VPN server is complicated, will require regular maintenance as well as audits, and you still hand over personal details to a VPS provider. However, you’ll reap several benefits of browsing at reasonable speeds and accessing your home network securely from anywhere.