this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Selfhosted

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Your help needed: PhD research on why people choose to self-host (survey.lpt.feri.um.si)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hi everyone,

I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.

To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.

🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls

This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.

If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.

Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project ([email protected])!

Cheers!

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[–] starshipwinepineapple 96 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

I submitted a response but if i may give some feedback, the second portion brings up:

I am willing to pay a substantial amount for hardware required for self-hosting.

This seemed out of place because there were no other value related questions (iirc). Such as:

  • I believe self hosting saves me money in the short term
  • i believe self hosting saves me money in the long run

I'm sure you could also think of more. But i think it's pretty important because between cloud service providers and any non-free apps you want to use, it can be quite costly compared to the cost of some hardware and time it takes to set things up.

The rest of my responses don't change but if you're wanting to understand the impact of money in all of this, i think some more questions are needed

Best of luck!

[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I believe self hosting saves me money in the short term
i believe self hosting saves me money in the long run

I can add to the voices here that have this as one big consideration. With some second-hand hardware, it's very cheap to set up almost unlimited cloud space for personal use.

[–] ulterno 3 points 1 day ago

And unless you are expecting significant traffic, you can use an old Core2Quad with 2GB RAM and it will work just fine.

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