My only quibble would be to swap “pay” for “invest” which captures both the dynamic of up front expense and expected savings from ending recurring subscription fees. That’s how I look at it. Every penny I put into my own digital sovereignty is an investment that will yield returns both financial and otherwise.

Not to mention that a lot of self-hosting can be done on hardware you already had laying around.

And I self-host precisely because of the money I save using surplussed hardware. I have a symmetrical 1Gb SOHO fibre connection from my ISP, so I can host whatever the hell I want, I just need to stand it up. And a beefy older system with oodles of RAM is perfect for spinning up VMs of various platforms for various tasks. This saves me craploads of money over even a single VM on cloud platforms like Vultr. Plus, even if I were to support a “heavy” service sufficiently in demand to warrant its own iron, it still costs me less than a year’s worth of hosting to obtain a decent platform for that service to run on all by it’s lonesome.

My only cloud costs end up being those services which are distributed for redundancy and geographical distance, such as DNS and caching CDNs.

I saved money by stea- I mean borrowing - work equipment

Second this - so far it has cost me money, but as I am able to cancel more subscription services, the savings will add up.

That’s a good idea, and maybe even Henry from Techlore.

That’s a very valid concern, and you’re absolutely right to bring it up.

One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users, which means that in order to get enough self-hosters from the general population for meaningful analysis, we’d need a very large sample.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the funding or resources to conduct such large-scale research through a representative panel or agency. That’s why this study is focusing on communities where self-hosting is already discussed, like this one.

That said, we’re definitely aware of this limitation, and we’re also sharing the survey in broader, more general-interest online communities where we expect non-self-hosters (or people unfamiliar with the concept) to be more present. This will allow us to include comparisons between the two groups in the analysis.

Really appreciate your thoughtful comment — thanks!

I sort of fit that category. I am aware of self-hosting, even somewhat interested. But I know absolutely nothing about it, and if I’m being honest, too lazy to research it.

Truthfully, I haven’t owned my own PC/Laptop in over a decade. I just use the one I get from work if I need to do something on a computer. I preferred gaming on a PS4/5 so I could just relax on the couch with a controller instead of sitting in a chair at a desk. I recently got a steam deck and love it. I want to poke around desktop mode some more so I can get more familiar with Linux.

Thank you for your feedback! You’re right, self-employment could be listed more clearly, but choosing “Other” was absolutely fine and your response is fully valid. Thanks again!

Thanks a lot for your input and kind wishes, really appreciate it!

I want to know 👉👈

Also there’s that a file on a cloud service might change. E.g. Amazon sometimes updates ebook covers to advertise that there’s a show - even for those who have paid extra to have the ad-free option.

E.g. the sticker-type graphic on this and that the title is updated to “The Fires Of Heaven: Book 5 of the Wheel of Time (Now a major TV series)”:

I downloaded music I bought online and copied it to my Google drive once. This was years back, mid 2010s, this album just came out for my favorite artist back then. I’d downloaded it back to another pc and a week later - poof. No more mp3s. @.@

Edit: just that folder of that album’s mp3s, not my whole music library back then, just to be clear. Still, that was my first big burn from cloud services.

Thank you for your comment. The use of similar statements is a common practice in survey research, as it helps to capture various dimensions of a construct more reliably and provides a clearer understanding of individual perspectives.

Regarding your concern, the purpose of this study is not to ask anyone to justify or defend their choices, whether it’s about using third-party services or self-hosting. Instead, we aim to identify the factors that influence such decisions, from a scientific standpoint, to better understand the motivations behind them. The goal is not to judge whether one choice is better than another, but to gain insights into the different considerations that shape people’s decisions when it comes to managing their data and services. Thank you again for taking the time to complete the survey.

um.si is for University of Maribor in Maribor, Slovenia. It looks legit.

Thanks a lot, really appreciate it! :)

Thanks for the comment — that’s a valid observation, and I understand how the wording might feel a bit awkward.

Just to clarify: the statement comes from a standardized construct called Subjective Norms, and follows the phrasing from the paper “A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model” by Venkatesh & Davis (2000).

For all independent variables in the survey, we relied on validated scales and established practices from prior scientific research, to ensure consistency and reliability. That said, I really appreciate your feedback. :)

Thanks for the comment: that’s a really good point to raise.

Just to clarify: the statement “I use self-hosted services in the following categories as much as possible” is meant to reflect how fully you make use of self-hosted solutions in each area. A response like “Strongly agree” would indicate that you actively use and take full advantage of self-hosting in that category.

If you don’t use solutions in a particular category at all — whether that’s because you don’t need them, aren’t interested, or use only external services — then it’s completely appropriate to select a disagreeing option (e.g. “Disagree” or “Strongly disagree”). In this context, lower agreement simply indicates low or no use, regardless of the reason.

From a methodological standpoint, the data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). This approach requires a complete set of responses across the measured constructs. If we included a “not applicable” option, it would create missing values in the dataset and potentially lead to excluding the entire response for that part of the analysis — which would significantly reduce the usable sample size.

That said, I really appreciate your feedback! :)

Thank you for your feedback and for completing the survey. The first part of the survey primarily focuses on Software as a Service (SaaS). We appreciate your input and will consider ways to clarify this in future surveys.