You’ve probably noticed that your monthly subscription costs keep creeping up.Within the last few years, most of my favorite services hiked their prices.Combined, these three services cost me over $300 a year.
The solution was to move the jobs to a low-power single-board computer.A Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with 1–2GB of RAM—or even a $15 Pi Zero 2 W—is more than enough for these tasks.If you have a Pi sitting in a drawer, a microSD card, and a willingness to try Docker, you can reclaim your budget over a single weekend.
Joplin took over for Evernote Unlimited devices and notes at no cost I take a ton of notes and regularly use my note apps to draft articles, which made Evernote’s late-2025 overhaul especially difficult.Personal and Professional tiers are now Starter (roughly $100 per year) and Advanced ($250 per year), while capping the free tier at 50 notes.Anyone that takes a lot of notes will run into that limit quickly.
I finally landed on Joplin.Joplin has a straightforward user interface, but supports all of the important note-taking features that you might want—you can insert images, hyperlinks, and create diagrams, and it is easy to organize into "notebooks." You can also self-host a server that syncs your notes between all of your clients, whether they're desktop or mobile.You lose some of Evernote’s high-end OCR features with Joplin and the interface is more minimalist, but those are small tradeoffs when you get access to an unlimited number of notes and devices.
If you take a lot of notes and want something that is both simple and capable, Joplin is a great option.PNY 32GB Elite microSD Card 5-pack Brand PNY Capacity 32GB Speed (Read/Write) 100MB/s This 5-pack of PNY 32GB Elite microSD cards are perfect for your Raspberry Pi or other homelab projects.With read speeds up to 100MB/s with Class 10 U3 classifications, these cards are ideal for boot drives, storage, and much more. $35 at Amazon Expand Collapse Navidrome replaced Spotify Your CD collection can be accessible anywhere in the world Spotify Premium Individual rose to $12.99 per month in February 2026—the third increase since 2023—and albums can vanish overnight because a licensing agreement changes or expires.
A small Navidrome server removed that risk entirely by creating a simple, lightweight streaming service based on the music you actually own.The server comes with a basic webUI to get you started, but you can also use any media player that is compatible with the Subsonic API.There are dozens, if not hundreds of options, that range from extremely minimalist to full Spotify replacements.
I've been using Symfonium because it works nicely with Android Auto.A Navidrome streaming server can also serve files to multiple different people or devices, and will automatically handle transcoding FLACs (or other media formats) that work for the device you're using.It can also help you save data by dropping to a lower bitrate when you're away from home.
The trade-off is that there is no discovery algorithm; you only have what you own.You also have to actually build your music collection, though CDs can be had at reasonable prices on the second-hand market.Related Your doctor probably still uses CDs, and 6 other reasons they won't go away CDs are far from dead, and I couldn't be happier Posts By Monica J.
White Vaultwarden saved the password manager bill Don't go without a password manager just because they cost Password managers are basically an essential item in 2026.We all have dozens or hundreds of logins, and each should ideally be unique, have a dozen characters, and include a mix of special characters, numbers, and capitals.That is difficult to handle manually and impractical to memorize.
Unfortunately, most password managers cost.You can pay for a password manager, or you can run Vaultwarden.Vaultwarden is an implementation of the Bitwarden server written in Rust.
It is incredibly efficient—idling at under 100 MB of RAM—which makes it one of the few services that runs perfectly on a Pi Zero 2 W.Because it uses the official Bitwarden API, you get to use the same polished apps and browser extensions on every platform without any client-side compromises.Crucially, Vaultwarden gives you features that Bitwarden’s own hosted service reserves for paid tiers, such as built-in one-time codes and file attachments, all for free.
The huge catch is that you are now responsible for one of the most important things in your digital world.You must ensure HTTPS is configured (clients don't work with plain HTTP) and you are responsible for your own backups.However, since cached vaults continue to work offline even if the server goes down, the risk isn't as serious as it might seem at first glance.
Self-hosting can actually save money Spending roughly $60 to $120 once on a low-RAM Pi and power supply beats paying $300 yearly.While the big tech services raised prices through 2025 and 2026, self-hosting prices only increased as much as the cost of electricity.These services aren't alone either.
If you also add a slightly more powerful server to the mix, you can self-host anything you currently pay a subscription for.Just stay clear of email—it is a ton of work and rarely pays off.
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