I hosted email until my email to a college student was rejected with no way of contacting either him or the admins of his school. That was the straw on the camels back.
I still self host apps today but my hardware is old enough that it costs more in power and cooling than what I get out of it, and the roi on new hardware doesn’t justify the means
> and the roi on new hardware doesn’t justify the means
That was my takeaway as well, considering that a 4 bay synology uses more in electricity than purchasing the same storage in the cloud (up to a certain point, datahoarders need not apply).
On top of that i then need to purchase new hardware every 3-6 years if i want reasonable assurance that my data is still there, and doing the math on a 5 year TCO, i would end up paying around double what i pay now, and still have worse data integrity.
I haven't done the math on where the breakaway point is, but i have around 10TB of cloud storage (including backups), as well as DNS services, static web hosting, mail, and a few other curiosities, and i average €25/month on cloud services.
Comparing that to a 4 bay synology with 4x6TB WD Red drives, you end up with €1276 in hardware costs (current prices here). Over a 5 year period that's €21.2/month for the hardware alone. Assuming the Synology draws 10W, and each WD Red draws an average of 5W, that's 30W of power, totalling around 22 kWh/month, which at €0.6/kWh adds up to an additional €13/month.
So in total around €35/month to self host what i can host in the cloud (including backups!) for €25/month.
I still self host apps today but my hardware is old enough that it costs more in power and cooling than what I get out of it, and the roi on new hardware doesn’t justify the means