I'm not affiliated with this in any way but saw it posted at the other place & thought fellow Lemmyzens might like to take a look.
I always find it quite hard to answer "favorite" apps as some infrastructure critical self hosted apps aren't as sexy as others which sit front & centre so I feel they often don't seem to get as much credit or attention (such as NGinX/DuckDNS compared to Immich/Jellyfin etc)
Hi everyone,
Like in previous years, I'm running a survey about self-hosting. The focus is on your favorite self-hosted apps, but there are plenty of other (optional) questions too. The top five app lists are free response fields, you don't have to select the suggestions.
Link to take the survey:
https://survey.deployn.de/s/self-host-2026
More info:
The survey is anonymous. Like last year, results will be published in aggregated form. I'm currently planning to publish them in December.
It takes about 10-25 minutes.
Some of you asked for more questions in the comments. I added a lot at first, then realized it took 45 minutes to fill out properly. So I threw some out again, but there are still quite a few. The survey now has a core section that mainly covers the MVPs (your 5 favorite apps), and you can switch on other modules if you want. Almost every question is optional and can be skipped. If you answer everything at a reasonable pace, it takes around 20 minutes.
The proprietary survey tool caused new problems every year, so last year I switched to HeyForm while the survey was already running. That wasn't ideal for my purposes either, so this year the survey runs on a new app. It should also make entering your apps faster.
It's still easier to fill out on a desktop computer.
Thank you in advance for participating.
This survey definitely looks vibe-coded as heck lol but I hope the results will be good.
My results :)
Data Hoarder ๐พ
God knows I wasn't going to put cost as a motivation... I am actively losing money running double the storage I am using and 100+ GB of RAM on a Xeon chip, but having the headroom is certainly nice and has allowed me to expand as much as I want. Getting a good deal a couple of years back before the price explosion was a huge stroke of luck. If this server ever failed I could figure out a smaller operation with more confidence.
You have over 100gb of ram? What do you need so much ram for?
Need is a strong word lol. I definitely don't need as much as I've got as I only use 20-50GB on services (Docker and TrueNAS) with the rest being used as ZFS cache. I would not have bought this much normally but I got it as a package in a PC with an RTX 3080, Xeon Gold 6150, and the RAM for $1000 CAD (750 USD ish?). No way was I passing that up.
Have you tried out Radicale? Curious if you have any comparison details between the two.
I tried it first and swapped away. I know I didn't like how Radicale required editing text files to add accounts, that's for sure, but the main reason I swapped was that the Docker environment kept freezing and using up 200% CPU until I manually restarted it. Rinse repeat every few hours. This was on a new install with 1 user. No issues since I moved to Baikal and the web UI is much nicer.
Actually, I use Baikal for contacts and Radicales for Calendars. It helps me keep everything well segregated.
Cost was one of my motivations, but it wasn't cost to me. Most of the people using my server definitely can't afford to subscribe to all those streaming services.
Glad you mentioned that. A lot of folks are saying costs isn't a good reason (for valid reasons), but I don't think the other users costs are typically thought of. I don't host to a lot of people, but they are active and use a few different services I host. That easily multiplies the cost savings imo.