There are plenty of free, self-hosted services that can replace popular paid subscriptions.All you need is the hardware to run them on.I paid $200 for my mini PC, and by self-hosting just five services, I save more than $670 every year, based on the monthly subscription prices.
Immich replaced my $9.99 per month Google storage subscription Google Photos is great until you run out of space Close A Google account gives you 15GB of free storage, but that allocation has to be shared across multiple Google services, including Photos, Drive, and Gmail.You can run out of space surprisingly quickly, especially if you're using automatic backup for all your photos and videos.If you want more storage, a $9.99 per month Google One subscription gives you 2 TB of storage.
Immich is an open-source, self-hosted photo and video management platform that's designed to replicate much of the experience of services such as Google Photos and iCloud.The Immich server runs on my mini PC, and the mobile app on my phone automatically backs up photos and videos to my server.Immich includes a lot of impressive features, including facial recognition, smart search, duplicate detection, and more.
There are some important caveats when using Immich.You'll need enough disk space to store all your photos and videos, and you also need to ensure that you have a robust backup system.Otherwise, one disk failure could see you lose your entire collection of photos and videos.
Running savings: $119.88 per year.Related I ditched my $120/year Google Drive subscription using an 8-year-old PC I almost sold Your decade-old PC that folks wouldn’t even pay $100 for could potentially save you $120 per year.Posts 2 By Dibakar Ghosh I ditched my $11.99-per-month Dropbox subscription for Nextcloud My mini PC is my personal cloud server Immich is specifically designed for managing photos and videos, so it's not a complete cloud storage solution.
Services such as Dropbox and Google Drive let you store any type of file or document in the cloud, so that you can access them remotely.The problem is that if you want a good amount of cloud storage, you're going to have to pay for it, with my 2 TB Dropbox subscription costing me $11.99 per month.Nextcloud is a self-hosted, open-source platform that lets me turn my own hardware into cloud storage.
Files live on hard drives connected to my mini PC, but I can use desktop and mobile clients to access those files and synchronize files between devices.As with Immich, you need a backup system in place, as otherwise you're at risk of losing all of your files.If you want remote access, you should also consider setting up secure options such as Tailscale.
Running savings: $263.76 per year.Actual Budget replaced my $14.99-per-month YNAB subscription I didn't like having to pay to save money This is perhaps the most satisfying of all my self-hosted services.For years, I used the You Need a Budget (YNAB) budgeting application to help me save money.
It uses a clever system in which you assign available money to specific spending and saving categories.If you want to spend more on dining out one month, for example, then you have to spend less in another category to cover the spending.YNAB works really well and can sync with bank and credit card accounts so your transactions are automatically uploaded.
The thing that bothered me was the $14.99 per month subscription fee.It stuck in my craw that I was assigning money each month to pay a bill for something that was supposed to help me save.Actual Budget is an open-source budgeting application that uses a very similar system to YNAB.
By running it on my mini PC, I get a lot of the same features without the monthly fee.There are even YNAB importers, so if you're moving from YNAB, it's quick and easy to get your data into Actual Budget.Account synchronization varies based on location.
There's support for SimpleFIN in the US and Canada.Running savings: $443.64 per year.Replacing 1Password with Vaultwarden saved me $3.99 per month Using my own password vault saves me almost $50 a year Using the same password for all of your accounts is a recipe for disaster, but trying to remember 39 different strong passwords is almost impossible.
Password managers such as 1Password take remembering your passwords out of your hands by storing them securely and allowing you to access them via your phone, computer, or in a browser.You often need to pay for the privilege, with 1Password costing $3.99 per month.Vaultwarden is an unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server designed for self-hosting.
I can run Vaultwarden on my mini PC and can access it using Bitwarden mobile apps and browser extensions.My password vault is stored on my own hardware, rather than third-party servers.Once again, backups are vital.
If you can't remember your passwords, storing them in a single location puts you at risk of losing them completely.Running savings: $491.52 per year.Joplin replaced my $14.99-per-month Evernote subscription Evernote's free tier is now heavily limited Evernote is a note-taking app that allows you to create and organize notes.
It's packed with features that let you add almost anything to your notes, including images, attachments, lists, web clippings, scanned documents, and more.It's more like a digital filing cabinet than a simple notes app, and all your data syncs across your different devices.Evernote wasn't always an expensive subscription, with a generous free tier and a Premium tier costing just $5 per month.
In 2023, the free tier became severely restricted, limiting users to a maximum of 50 notes, and the cheapest subscription now costs $14.99 per month.Joplin is a free and open-source note-taking application for desktop and mobile.Unlike Evernote, you don't need to pay to synchronize your notes; you can use self-hosted options such as WebDAV and Nextcloud.
Since I'm already running Nextcloud on my mini PC, I can use that server to synchronize my Joplin notes between devices, without a subscription.Joplin isn't an exact replica of Evernote.If you rely heavily on Evernote, you may want to ensure that Joplin includes all the features you need before you cancel your Evernote subscription.
Total savings: $671.40 per year.My mini PC saves me $670 per year, but it isn't free I paid $200 for my mini PC, but thanks to the RAMpocalypse, the same model is well over $300 today.There are also additional costs associated with hosting your own services, such as additional storage, electricity, and the time you spend on maintenance and backups.
Even factoring in those costs, however, depending on the services you host and the subscriptions you replace, the whole setup could pay for itself in under a year.
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