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Keep it at home until something forces you off

The default is your own hardware. If a service is private, only you and your household touch it, and it never needs to be reachable from the public internet, it belongs on the box you already own. A NAS, a Proxmox node, an old desktop, whatever you have. Mine is an old gaming PC, an i9-9900K with 32GB and an RTX 3080, that I moved into a Silverstone RM44 and now run Proxmox on. It costs me the electricity I was already paying and not a cent more. You can put a real number on that with the homelab power calculator, and for most people it is a few dollars a month.

Three things push a service off the home box and onto the cloud, and none of them is "the cloud is just better". It has to be reachable by strangers. It has to stay up when your power or internet does not. It should not sit on the same network as your personal devices. If none of those apply to you, stop reading and keep it at home.

Keep it on the home server when it is private

Most of a homelab belongs here, and this is why you build one in the first place. Anything that lives behind your own walls has no reason to pay rent in a data center. On my box that means media, file storage, a few small local LLMs, and a Minecraft server, all of it running on hardware I already had. The list looks like this:

• Media: Plex, Jellyfin, the library you stream to your own TVs.
• Backups and file storage on the NAS.
• Home automation, dashboards, and internal admin panels.
• Anything you reach over a VPN or Tailscale rather than a public domain.

If you want any of this from outside the house, the move is a VPN back in, not opening a port to the world. That keeps it private and keeps it free.

Rent a cloud server when it must be public and you can run it yourself

This tier goes by a few names, a cloud server, a cloud VM, or a VPS. DigitalOcean calls theirs a Droplet, Vultr calls theirs an instance. Whatever the label, it is a bare Linux box in a data center with a static IP and a real uplink, and you get root and nothing else. You install everything, configure the firewall, keep it patched, set up TLS, and you are the one who gets woken up when it breaks. The small ones start around $5 to $6 a month, billed by the hour, so you can build one, use it, and kill it when you are done. I rent one of these myself for a project that has to stay reachable, and the box itself has been fine.

Reach for one when the thing has to face the public internet and you are comfortable being the sysadmin:

• A small public site, a status page, or a personal project on its own domain.
• A game server, a Discord bot, or a public API for your friends.
• A VPN exit, a tunnel endpoint, or a relay you want off your home IP.
• Anything where your home connection is the problem: a dynamic IP, CGNAT, a blocked port 25 or 80, or an upload speed that cannot serve a single visitor.

What makes it cheap is also the workload. Every update, every security hole, every certificate renewal is yours. If running the box is part of the fun, nothing beats it on value.

Use managed hosting when the server is not the point

Managed hosting puts a team and a control panel on top of the same kind of cloud server. Cloudways, for example, runs on DigitalOcean and Vultr machines, so the server underneath is the same one you could rent raw, but you do not touch the operating system. You deploy your site or app, and they handle the patching, the hardening, the server-level backups, and the uptime. Plans start around $11 a month, a few dollars more than the bare server, and there is a free trial so you can see it before paying. I also keep some shared hosting for the projects where I do not want to think about the server at all, and honestly it does the job.

This is the right call when you need something public but the server itself is a means to an end and not the hobby:

• A WordPress, WooCommerce, or Laravel site you want online and fast without becoming a Linux admin.
• A site for a client or a small business, where you are responsible for uptime but do not want the 2am alarm when a kernel needs patching.
• A public app you would rather build than babysit.

You pay a small premium and give up some control. If you enjoy running servers, a raw VPS is cheaper and yours to break. If you just want the thing online and off your plate, managed earns its few extra dollars. I lean managed for anything where the server is not what I came to do.

How I split mine

Almost everything I self-host lives at home, on a Synology NAS and that Proxmox box. Media, backups, small local LLMs, a Minecraft server, and a handful of dashboards I reach over a VPN. None of it needs to face the public internet, so none of it costs me anything past the power bill, and the hardware was already mine. That is the case for home, and once you own the box it wins on cost per resource and on control every time.

But I do not pretend home is the answer for everything, because it is not. For the projects that have to stay reachable no matter what my power or internet is doing, I rent. I keep a VPS for the things I want to run myself and some shared hosting for the things I do not, and the service on both has been good enough that I have no reason to move them home. That is the split. Home for anything private, a rented box for anything that has to be public, always-on, and off my home connection. It is the same decision tree I just walked you through, because it is the one I actually run.

Common questions

Should I self-host at home or use a VPS?

Keep private and internal services at home, where they cost only the power you already pay. I run both, and home wins for anything that stays behind your own walls. Use a VPS for anything that has to be public and reliable, especially if your home connection has a dynamic IP, CGNAT, or blocked ports that make self-hosting from the house painful or impossible.

What is the difference between a VPS and managed hosting?

A raw VPS is a bare server. You install, secure, patch, and run everything on it. Managed hosting puts a control panel and a support team on top of that same kind of server, so you deploy your site and they handle the operating system, security updates, and uptime. You pay a little more for managed and give up some low-level control.

Is managed hosting worth it over a cheap VPS?

If running a Linux server is the hobby, a raw VPS is cheaper and you keep full control. If the server is just how you get a site or app online, managed hosting saves you the patching, the hardening, and the late-night fixes for a few dollars more a month. It comes down to whether you want to run the box or just use it. I lean managed when the server is not the point.

Why not just expose my home server to the internet?

You can, but a home connection often has a dynamic IP, CGNAT, or ISP-blocked ports, and putting a public service on the same network as your personal devices widens what an attacker can reach. For anything public and important, a cheap VPS keeps it off your home network and gives you a stable address. For that reason I rent for my public projects instead of pointing them at my home IP.