Self-Hosting is the practice of running your own servers, whether they are in the cloud or on premises. This is in contrast to using a SaaS or PaaS provider to run your software.
I'm a huge fan of the Acquired podcast, where they tell the stories of some of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.
Nearly every episode the hosts talk about a Jeff Bezos quote "Focus on the things that make your beer taste better.", the core of the idea is that you should focus on the things that make your product unique, and outsource the rest.
Considering this advice, it isn't hard to imagine how the software industry has traded running their own software in favor of SaaS and PaaS alternatives.
Why should we become experts in hosting our own database clusters when AWS RDS exists, for example?
The first reason that might spring to mind is that it is cheaper to self-host, and importantly this is more true now than ever. We measure this expense as "total cost of ownership" or TCO, and it is a measure of the cost of running a system over time, including the cost of the hardware, software, and people required to run it.
Not long ago it was totally reasonable to assume that a SaaS or PaaS provider will net out saving you money over self-hosting, due to the engineering costs of running your own systems.
But today, with the tools we have available it is no more difficult to self-host a distributed system than it is to buy and configure a SaaS or PaaS. In some ways it's even easier, because changes are tracked in version control rather than in a web interface.
PaaS and SaaS pricing is a well-tuned engine to extract as much cash from you as a user as possible. It's incredible that open-source often presents a viable alternative to this model, and with the tools we have today it's definitely worth considering.
In order to operate a profitable SaaS or PaaS platform, the vendor needs to reduce scope and configurability.
Your instance is likely part of some larger multi-tenant cluster, and you are limited in the ways you can configure it. At best the vendor restricts your options just to provide a scalable service to all of their customers, and at worst your options are limited intentionally to increase your spending.
When self-hosting you probably want the power to change the hardware, networking configuration, application configuration, and even build your own version of the application if you need to.
You probably want to manage all of that from a single git repo, and you can!
This ability to control your own system is a huge advantage of self-hosting, and it really does have a material impact on your product's user experience because it grants the power to tailor the system precisely to your needs.
When you self-host your software you can move it to any cloud provider. Kubernetes is being called "the operating system of the cloud" and if you build for Kubernetes, you build for anywhere.
PaaS and SaaS providers are incentivized to make it difficult to move your workload elsewhere. By contrast current tools (like CNDI) can have your workload running on a new cloud provider with 5 lines of code and a Pull Request.
The open-source ecosystem is a wild place. We're seeing open-core projects changing license terms, acquisitions, and hyperscalers forking projects for their own use.
Running your own open source clusters puts you in the driver's seat. If you're ready to get started with hosting you're own systems, check out CNDI.
