Everything here is free and open-source unless noted, and every entry links to the project's own site and source so you can read up before deciding. Where several apps do the same job, the one marked recommended is what we install by default. However, it's your server: you pick.
The badge on each card is its installation tier. Don't see something you use? Ask! If it self-hosts, it can probably be quoted.
Every build starts here. These come with the baseline setup and provide an environment for your services as well as easy access to them.
The hypervisor the whole server runs on. Each service lives in its own container or virtual machine so one app can't take down another, and every one of them can be snapshotted before an update and rolled back in seconds if it goes wrong.
The dashboard you actually open: one page listing every service with live status, disk and CPU widgets, and links that work the same on your phone and your TV. This is what your community sees instead of a list of IP addresses.
A friendlier, drag-and-drop alternative dashboard if you'd rather arrange tiles in a browser than edit a config file.
Deduplicated, encrypted, incremental backups of every container and VM, with verification jobs that prove the backup is readable rather than assuming it.
Getting out of Google Photos or iCloud is the most common reason people call. All three of these back up from your phone automatically.
The closest thing to a drop-in Google Photos replacement: automatic background upload from iOS and Android, a fast scrolling timeline, face grouping, object and text search, shared albums, and partner sharing. Actively developed and the one we'll install unless you have a reason to pick another.
Indexes a folder of photos in place rather than taking ownership of them, which suits people who already have a carefully organised library on disk and want browsing and AI search bolted on top without moving a single file.
End-to-end encrypted, so the server stores only ciphertext. Even you can't read the library without the key. The strongest privacy of the three, at the cost of some server-side features. The apps are the same whether you self-host or use their hosted plan.
Your own library, streamed to TVs, phones, tablets, browsers and consoles. Bring your existing files, or rip the discs on the shelf.
Completely free and open-source, with no account to create, nothing phoning home, and hardware transcoding included rather than paywalled. Clients for Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, webOS, Kodi and the browser. My default recommendation, and it handles music and books too.
The most polished clients and the easiest remote sharing with friends, which is why so many communities already run it. The trade-off is a mandatory cloud account, telemetry, and a paid Plex Pass for hardware transcoding and mobile sync.
The middle ground: local-first like Jellyfin, with polish and a paid Premier tier like Plex. Worth a look if Jellyfin's clients miss something you need.
A player rather than a server. A full-screen media centre for a box wired to the TV. Pairs well with Jellyfin doing the library management behind it.
If you're already running Jellyfin it will serve your music library perfectly well. These are for people who want a dedicated experience specifically for music or those who don't care about storing shows and movies.
Fast, tiny, and speaks the Subsonic API, which unlocks a big ecosystem of good mobile clients with offline caching and gapless playback. The best pick for a large personal collection.
A music and podcast server that federates, meaning you can share libraries and follow other instances across the fediverse rather than keeping your collection entirely to yourself.
Exactly what the name says: negligible resource use and a genuinely good recommendation engine, ideal on a low-power box or alongside a dozen other services.
How you get to your services from outside, and how the rest of your community benefits even when you're not home.
A WireGuard mesh that connects your devices to your server directly, through CGNAT and firewalls, with no ports opened and nothing published to the internet. Add a device and it can reach your server; remove it and it can't. The safest remote access there is, and the default on every build.
The long-standing standard. Slower and fiddlier than WireGuard, but it gets through restrictive corporate and hotel networks that block everything else, and it runs on hardware too old for anything modern.
The reverse proxy that lets everything live behind a single open port on clean subdomains, with HTTPS certificates obtained and renewed automatically and no certificate config to forget about. The foundation of any setup exposed to the internet.
Network-wide ad and tracker blocking at the DNS layer. Every device on your network benefits: smart TVs, consoles and phone apps included. No client software and no browser extension to install.
Not one app but the work of safely putting a service on the public internet: perimeter firewall rules, a dedicated VLAN for the server, intrusion detection with CrowdSec, forward authentication in front of anything sensitive, and a patch and review routine. Priced at the advanced tier because getting this wrong is the one mistake that really costs you.
The productivity half: the shared drive, the calendar, and your own corner of the web.
A full replacement for Dropbox plus Google Calendar plus Contacts plus Docs: synced folders on every desktop and phone, shared links, collaborative editing, and no per-seat pricing or storage ceiling beyond your own drives. Priced at the advanced tier because it's a large application with a database, an office backend and a real migration path to get right.
You're seeing this in action right now! You bring your site and we'll help you host it (or we can help you write it too, at a separate rate). Served straight off your home server behind Caddy: a static site built with Hugo or Astro, a custom domain, automatic HTTPS, and no platform that can suspend, rank or monetise you. No hosting fees besides domain renewal. Includes deployment so that publishing is one command.
RSS is the original decentralised feed: you choose the sources, the order is chronological, and nothing is inserted into it. Break yourself free from the algorithm and reclaim your attention.
Quick, self-hosted, multi-user, with mobile clients and a built-in scraper for sites that don't publish a feed. The easiest one to live in day to day.
Deliberately minimal: a single Go binary, no JavaScript framework, almost no resource use, and a readable interface that never changes under you.
The old workhorse. Endlessly configurable with plugins and filters if you want to automate what you read rather than just read it.
Requests and library management for a media server that more than one person uses.
A request front-end for your media server: your community browses, searches and asks for a film or a series in a clean interface, and you approve it in one tap instead of fielding text messages. Overseerr for Plex, Jellyseerr for Jellyfin and Emby.
Brings Stremio add-on catalogues into Jellyfin, so external sources appear as part of your normal library and play in the clients you already use. Needs its own API keys and add-ons configured, which is what the setup covers.
Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr and Bazarr working together: index sources once, and your library organises, renames, upgrades quality and fetches subtitles on its own, feeding straight into Jellyfin or Plex. Priced at the advanced tier because it's five interlocking applications sharing indexers, download clients and a file layout that has to be right for all of them.
For the curious. Not everyday tools, but genuinely interesting.
A peer-to-peer network aiming to be a decentralised replacement for the web itself, where applications run across participating nodes instead of on a company's servers. The original project of this name continues as Hyphanet, an anonymous censorship-resistant datastore. Both are listed here because the names are easy to confuse.
A free 30-minute call. We talk about what you want off the cloud, what hardware you have, and what it would take. No obligation, and if the honest answer is "you don't need us for this," you'll get that answer.
Social
Posting from an address you control, on a server nobody can suspend. Expect a smaller audience and far better signal. Bring your friends!
Mastodon
Basic · $50RecommendedThe largest federated social network. Your own instance means your handle is at your domain, your posts live on your disk, and no policy change or acquisition can take the account away from you. Federated means your reach is vast and your community can fit comfortably.
Bluesky PDS
Basic · $50Run your own Personal Data Server: your identity and your posts sit on your hardware, while you appear on the main Bluesky network as normal. The most usable way to self-host social media without giving up the audience.
HumHub
Basic · $50A private social network rather than a public one. Spaces, posts, files and events for a family, a club, a team or a small company, with nobody outside able to see any of it.
Diaspora
Basic · $50One of the original decentralised networks, built around aspects (fine-grained control over which circle of contacts sees each post) and pods (groups of likeminded or nearby people). Development has slowed, so treat this as a choice for the curious rather than a first recommendation.
Mixpost
Basic · $50Self-hosted scheduling and analytics for the social accounts you still keep elsewhere. Think Buffer or Hootsuite replacement with no monthly fee. The Lite edition is free; Pro is a one-off paid licence, which is not included in the install price.