Escape Big Tech in a Weekend

What's Next

What’s Next

Sunday evening.

Your home server is running five applications that used to cost you $50 a month. Your photos are backing up from your phone to your own hardware. Your files are syncing across devices through your own server. Your passwords are encrypted and stored locally. Your media library is streaming to your TV. Your documents are searchable.

That’s a real accomplishment. Most people who want to do this never start.

Now — where do you go from here?

Priority 1 — Set Up Backups

This cannot wait.

Your home server is not a backup. It is a primary storage location. If a drive fails, if the server is stolen, if there’s a fire — everything on it is gone. Before you cancel any Big Tech subscriptions, you need at least one backup of everything that matters.

The self-hosting community uses the 3-2-1 rule as a backup standard:

For a home server, a practical 3-2-1 setup looks like:

  1. Primary — your home server (what you just built)
  2. Local backup — an external USB hard drive that backs up nightly
  3. Offsite backup — cloud backup to Backblaze B2 (approximately $6/month for 1TB)

For local backup: Install rsync and set up a cron job to copy your data drive to the external drive nightly:

sudo apt install rsync
crontab -e

Add this line (backs up at 2 AM daily):

0 2 * * * rsync -av /data/ /mnt/backup/

For offsite backup: Backblaze B2 is the most popular choice for self-hosters. Install rclone, configure it with your B2 credentials, and set up a daily sync. Rclone handles encryption so your files are protected in transit and at rest.

Full backup setup guides are available in the Cactus Commons Media library.

Priority 2 — Cancel Your Subscriptions (Carefully)

Once your setup has been running reliably for 30 days and your backups are working, it’s time to start canceling.

Do it one service at a time, not all at once. Suggested order:

  1. Password manager — Vaultwarden is ready immediately
  2. Cloud storage — After Nextcloud has been syncing reliably for a month
  3. Photo storage — After Immich is backing up your phone and your library is fully imported
  4. Media subscriptions — Jellyfin doesn’t replace Netflix content, only your personal library
  5. Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace — After Nextcloud Office is set up and working for your documents

Some subscriptions are worth keeping even after you self-host. Netflix has content you can’t own. Spotify has licensing deals for music you don’t have. Be pragmatic — the goal is ownership and control, not monasticism.

Priority 3 — Remote Access

Right now your server is only accessible on your home network. That’s safe and simple, but it means you can’t access your Nextcloud files, Vaultwarden passwords, or Immich photos when you’re away from home.

There are two good solutions for beginners:

Option A — Tailscale (recommended for beginners)

Tailscale is a VPN service that connects your devices together as if they were on the same local network — even when they’re not. Install Tailscale on your server and your phone or laptop, and you can access all your services by your server’s local IP from anywhere in the world.

It’s free for personal use (up to 100 devices), requires no router configuration, and takes about 10 minutes to set up.

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
sudo tailscale up

Option B — Self-hosted VPN (WireGuard)

WireGuard is a fast, modern VPN you can run on your own server. It requires opening one port on your router and is slightly more involved to set up than Tailscale, but it’s entirely self-hosted with no third-party dependency.

Either option gives you secure access to all your services from anywhere.

Priority 4 — Automate Updates

Your Docker containers need periodic updates to stay patched and get new features. Watchtower automates this by monitoring your containers and updating them automatically when new images are released:

mkdir -p ~/docker/watchtower
cd ~/docker/watchtower
nano docker-compose.yml

services:
  watchtower:
    image: containrrr/watchtower
    container_name: watchtower
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    environment:
      - WATCHTOWER_CLEANUP=true
      - WATCHTOWER_SCHEDULE=0 0 4 * * *   # runs at 4 AM daily
    restart: unless-stopped

docker compose up -d

Watchtower will check for updated images daily and restart containers with the new version automatically. Some people prefer manual updates for more control — your choice.

What to Add Next

Once the core stack is stable and backed up, you have a solid foundation to build on. Here are the most popular additions in the self-hosting community:

Home Assistant — The most popular self-hosted smart home platform. If you have smart devices, this is the logical next step. Controls thousands of devices locally without cloud dependency.

Navidrome — Self-hosted music server. Stream your personal music collection to any device using any Subsonic-compatible app.

Uptime Kuma — Beautiful self-hosted uptime monitor. Tracks whether each of your services is up and sends notifications if something goes down.

Stirling PDF — Self-hosted PDF toolkit. Merge, split, compress, convert, and edit PDFs through a web interface.

Mealie — Self-hosted recipe manager. Import recipes from any URL, plan meals, and generate shopping lists.

Miniflux — Self-hosted RSS reader. Follow websites, blogs, and news sources without an algorithm deciding what you see.

Changedetection.io — Monitor any webpage for changes and get notified when prices drop, items come back in stock, or content updates.

Ollama + Open-WebUI — Run AI language models locally on your home server. Private AI that doesn’t send your conversations to any company.

The self-hosting rabbit hole is deep and rewarding. The r/selfhosted community on Reddit is an excellent resource for discovering new apps and getting help when you’re stuck.

A Note on the Journey

Self-hosting is less of a destination and more of a practice. The weekend you just completed is a beginning — a foundation you’ll build on over months and years as your confidence grows and your needs evolve.

Things will break occasionally. A container will crash, a config file will have a typo, an update will change something. That’s normal and not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. Each problem you work through teaches you something, and the community has seen almost every issue you’ll encounter.

You’ve taken something real this weekend. Your data is yours again. That’s worth protecting and worth building on.

Resources

Communities:

Tools:

Cactus Commons Media:

Congratulations. You built your private cloud.

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