Self-hosting your own services may seem like a chore, but it’s worth the hassle when cloud platforms and online applications inch closer to intrusive, subscription-based models with each passing day. While they’re often associated with home labs and server-grade equipment, you don’t need powerful systems or a lot of technical know-how to run services on local hardware.

Thanks to simple docker-run commands and Compose files, it’s easier than ever to deploy QoL-enhancing applications. Plus, since you’ll run them inside containerized environments, most self-hosted apps (barring certain demanding services) are fairly light on the resource consumption front. I tend to use dozens of these services, and while some of them are only useful for specific tasks, others are far more versatile – and here are a couple of apps I’d recommend every user give a shot.

Kopia

Remember the 3-2-1 backup rule when using it

Creating regular backups of your data is often the most common advice you’d hear from PC-building enthusiasts, and for good reason. While redundant copies of data may sound excessive, nothing’s more reassuring than having a couple of backups when things go south, and you risk losing essential files.

I prefer using Kopia to back up all my systems – including my daily driver, MacBook, and the virtual guests residing in my home lab. Its deduplication and compression facilities ensure your snapshots won’t occupy too much space, while its encryption provisions make your backup data more resilient to ransomware. Kopia supports local, remote, and cloud-based backups, so you can choose whether to send your snapshots to external drives, NAS units, or even Amazon’s S3 buckets.

Whatever you pick, I recommend following the 3-2-1 backup rule: keep at least three copies of data on two different platforms, with one of them being in a remote location.

BentoPDF

A bunch of tools to make your PDF-editing tasks easier

Editing PDFs may be a simple task, but the enshittified freemium apps and intrusive cloud platforms can be rather frustrating to use. Between their constant pleas for sign-ups, limited functionality, and watermarks that won’t go away unless you shell out some cash, modifying your PDF documents can be a real pain.

That is, unless you go for something like BentoPDF. Capable of running as a Docker container, BentoPDF lets you merge documents, delete pages, create annotations, trim margins, add signatures, and encrypt PDF files. Heck, it even supports advanced utilities, including tools to edit metadata and (automatically) remove blank pages. There’s also the ability to convert PDF documents to other files, which is quite useful since .pdf is the only format that my favorite file conversion tool doesn’t support. Speaking of…

Vert

The best file-conversion utility out there

When it comes to annoying platforms, online file converters are even more ridiculous than their PDF-editing counterparts. You’ve got small file limits to contend with as well as abysmally long conversion times, and the latter can be especially annoying when you need to process multiple pictures or documents.

Vert is a solid file converter that gets rid of third-party servers and runs all file processing tasks on your local hardware. Aside from its lack of support for PDFs, Vert is compatible with a ton of formats and can work with images, documents, and audio files. Its processing speed is also terrific, and you don’t have to worry about max size limits, either. If you want even more utility out of it, you can self-host Vertd, a video converter that relies on Vert’s interface. It’s not as simple as spinning up Vert, but as long as you have the right GPU drivers and edit the docker-compose.yml file, even beginners should have no trouble deploying it.

Vaultwarden

A safe vault for your passwords

Truth be told, unless you go for the Proxmox LXC version, Vaultwarden requires a few extra steps to run compared to the rest of the services on this list. But if you're willing to create a reverse proxy and HTTPS certificates, Vaultwarden fairly easy to configure, and is a game-changer for privacy-centric folks who need a secure vault to store their passwords.

Heck, it can store a lot more than just passwords, including API keys, TOTP codes, and virtual documents. There’s a built-in password generator, so you can create (and save) long randomized strings to lower the chances of your credentials getting cracked by brute-force attacks. Factor its compatibility with the easy-to-use Bitwarden browser extension into the equation, and you can see why I hold Vaultwarden in such high regard.

PairDrop

It’s like AirDrop, but for non-Apple devices

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there’s no denying that the solid interoperability between Macs, iPhones, and iPads is one of the best features of Apple’s premium ecosystem. AirDrop is a core utility behind this, as it lets you share files between your Apple hardware instantly – regardless of whether you're on iOS or macOS. Unfortunately, this feature is restricted to Apple devices, but the self-hosted ecosystem has a neat alternative.

Enter PairDrop, which borrows more than just the name from AirDrop. Rather than relying on both Bluetooth and a Wi-Fi connection, PairDrop only requires the latter to help you send files. Once you’ve deployed a PairDrop instance, you can simply log into the container’s web UI on both (or multiple) devices and start transferring files. As someone who often uses it to send everything from screenshots to large ISO files between PCs, laptops, phones, and server nodes, PairDrop is my preferred no-nonsense file transfer tool when I don’t want to deal with FTP clients or network shares.

Dig deeper, and you’ll find even more useful FOSS tools

Aside from the tools I’ve mentioned on this list, the self-hosting landscape has tons of other utilities that deserve a mention. If you’ve been following my articles at XDA, you may recognize Paperless-ngx and Firefly III. The former is a must-have utility for anyone who dreads managing documents as much as I do, while the latter is a fully private finance manager.

There’s also Syncthing, which comes in handy when you want automatic file synchronization. I also wanted to give a shout-out to Nextcloud that, when combined with certain applications, can turn into a full-on Microsoft 365 replacement.