The Complete Guide to Self-Hosting for Startups Under $50/Month

Your startup pays $500-2,000/month in SaaS subscriptions before you've made your first dollar.

Slack. GitHub. Google Workspace. Notion. Intercom. HubSpot. Each one is "just $10/user/month." Each one is essential. Together, they consume 20-40% of your runway.

Meanwhile, successful bootstrapped startups run their entire operation on $50/month in server costs.

Same features. Better performance. Complete ownership.

This guide shows you how to build a production-ready startup tech stack for under $50/month using self-hosted open source alternatives. You'll get deployment instructions, cost breakdowns, and a migration roadmap.

If you're new to self-hosting, start with our Docker 101 guide to understand the fundamentals.

The $50/Month Startup Stack

Here's the complete infrastructure:

Core Stack Components

| Category | Tool | Replaces | Monthly Cost | | ------------------ | ----------- | --------------------- | ------------ | | Team Chat | Mattermost | Slack | Included | | Analytics | Plausible | Google Analytics | Included | | Code Hosting | GitLab CE | GitHub | Included | | CI/CD | GitLab CI | GitHub Actions | Included | | Documentation | Outline | Notion/Confluence | Included | | Password Mgmt | Vaultwarden | 1Password | Included | | Monitoring | Uptime Kuma | Pingdom | Included | | Email | SendGrid | SendGrid (same) | $0 (free tier) | | File Storage | Nextcloud | Google Drive | Included | | Customer Support | Chatwoot | Intercom | Included | | Infrastructure | Hetzner VPS | DigitalOcean/AWS | $39/month | | Backups | Backblaze B2| AWS S3 | $7/month |

Total Monthly Cost: $46/month ($552/year)

SaaS Equivalent Cost (10-person team):

• Slack Pro: $72.50/month
• GitHub Team: $44/month (4 devs)
• Notion: $150/month (10 users)
• 1Password: $80/month (10 users)
• Plausible: $19/month
• Intercom: $74/month + usage
• Uptime monitoring: $10-20/month
• Google Workspace: $120/month

Total SaaS: $570-600/month ($6,840/year)

Savings: $524/month ($6,288/year) = 91% cost reduction

Infrastructure Setup

Server Architecture

Option A: Single Server (Budget - $20/month)

Best for: Teams of 5-10, early stage, minimal traffic

• Provider: Hetzner CPX31 (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD)
• Cost: €19/month (~$20)
• Runs: Mattermost + Plausible + Outline + Vaultwarden + Monitoring
• Limitation: Can't run GitLab (needs 4GB RAM alone)

Option B: Two-Server Setup (Recommended - $39/month)

Best for: Teams of 10-20, production workloads

• Server 1 - Apps: Hetzner CPX21 (3 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD) - €9/month
  • Runs: Mattermost, Outline, Vaultwarden, Chatwoot, Uptime Kuma
• Server 2 - GitLab: Hetzner CPX31 (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD) - €19/month
  • Runs: GitLab CE with built-in CI/CD and registry
• Server 3 - Analytics: Hetzner CPX11 (2 vCPU, 2GB RAM, 40GB SSD) - €5/month
  • Runs: Plausible Analytics

Total: €33/month (~$36)

Option C: Three-Server Setup (Production - $50/month)

Best for: Teams of 20-50, high availability needed

• Same as Option B but with redundancy and load balancing
• Add: Backup server, staging environment

Initial Server Setup (All Servers)

# Update system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Install Docker
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

# Install Docker Compose
sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin -y

# Install fail2ban (security)
sudo apt install fail2ban -y

# Configure firewall
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow 22    # SSH
sudo ufw allow 80    # HTTP
sudo ufw allow 443   # HTTPS
sudo ufw enable

Domain Setup

Register domains (~$12/year total):

• chat.yourdomain.com → Mattermost
• git.yourdomain.com → GitLab
• docs.yourdomain.com → Outline
• analytics.yourdomain.com → Plausible
• status.yourdomain.com → Uptime Kuma
• support.yourdomain.com → Chatwoot

DNS Configuration:

Add A records pointing each subdomain to appropriate server IP.

Tool-by-Tool Deployment

1. Reverse Proxy (Caddy) - Deploy First

Caddy handles HTTPS certificates automatically for all services.

mkdir -p ~/caddy
cd ~/caddy
nano Caddyfile

chat.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8065
}

docs.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3010
}

analytics.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8000
}

status.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3001
}

support.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"
services:
  caddy:
    image: caddy:2-alpine
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      - caddy-data:/data
      - caddy-config:/config
volumes:
  caddy-data:
  caddy-config:

docker compose up -d

2. Mattermost (Team Chat)

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

version: "3.8"
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:13-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: mmuser
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${MM_DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: mattermost
    volumes:
      - postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  mattermost:
    image: mattermost/mattermost-team-edition:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "8065:8065"
    environment:
      MM_SQLSETTINGS_DRIVERNAME: postgres
      MM_SQLSETTINGS_DATASOURCE: "postgres://mmuser:${MM_DB_PASSWORD}@postgres:5432/mattermost?sslmode=disable"
      MM_SERVICESETTINGS_SITEURL: https://chat.yourdomain.com
    volumes:
      - mattermost-config:/mattermost/config
      - mattermost-data:/mattermost/data
    depends_on:
      - postgres

volumes:
  postgres-data:
  mattermost-config:
  mattermost-data:

Create .env:

nano .env

MM_DB_PASSWORD=your_secure_password_here

Deploy:

docker compose up -d

Resource Usage: ~400MB RAM, 10-20% CPU

3. GitLab CE (Code Hosting + CI/CD)

Deploy on dedicated server (needs 4GB+ RAM):

mkdir -p ~/gitlab
cd ~/gitlab

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"
services:
  gitlab:
    image: gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest
    restart: always
    hostname: git.yourdomain.com
    environment:
      GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
        external_url 'https://git.yourdomain.com'
        gitlab_rails['gitlab_shell_ssh_port'] = 2222
        # Reduce memory usage for small teams
        puma['worker_processes'] = 2
        sidekiq['max_concurrency'] = 10
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
      - "2222:22"
    volumes:
      - gitlab-config:/etc/gitlab
      - gitlab-logs:/var/log/gitlab
      - gitlab-data:/var/opt/gitlab

volumes:
  gitlab-config:
  gitlab-logs:
  gitlab-data:

docker compose up -d

First-time setup: GitLab takes 5-10 minutes to start initially. Get root password:

docker compose exec gitlab grep 'Password:' /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password

Resource Usage: ~3GB RAM, 20-40% CPU

Features included:

• Git repositories (unlimited private repos)
• CI/CD pipelines (unlimited minutes)
• Container registry
• Issue tracking
• Wiki
• Code review
• Protected branches

4. Plausible Analytics

mkdir -p ~/plausible
cd ~/plausible

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"
services:
  plausible:
    image: plausible/analytics:latest
    restart: always
    command: sh -c "sleep 10 && /entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh run"
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - clickhouse
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      BASE_URL: https://analytics.yourdomain.com
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: ${PLAUSIBLE_SECRET}
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://plausible:${DB_PASSWORD}@postgres:5432/plausible
      CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL: http://clickhouse:8123/plausible

  postgres:
    image: postgres:14-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: plausible
      POSTGRES_DB: plausible

  clickhouse:
    image: clickhouse/clickhouse-server:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - clickhouse-data:/var/lib/clickhouse
    environment:
      CLICKHOUSE_DB: plausible

volumes:
  postgres-data:
  clickhouse-data:

Resource Usage: ~500MB RAM, 5-15% CPU

5. Outline (Documentation)

mkdir -p ~/outline
cd ~/outline

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"
services:
  outline:
    image: outlinewiki/outline:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "3010:3000"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://outline:${DB_PASSWORD}@postgres:5432/outline
      REDIS_URL: redis://redis:6379
      SECRET_KEY: ${SECRET_KEY}
      UTILS_SECRET: ${UTILS_SECRET}
      URL: https://docs.yourdomain.com
      # Use Slack or Google for auth
      SLACK_CLIENT_ID: ${SLACK_CLIENT_ID}
      SLACK_CLIENT_SECRET: ${SLACK_CLIENT_SECRET}
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - redis

  postgres:
    image: postgres:14-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: outline
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: outline
    volumes:
      - postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    restart: always

volumes:
  postgres-data:

Resource Usage: ~300MB RAM, 5-10% CPU

6. Vaultwarden (Password Manager)

mkdir -p ~/vaultwarden
cd ~/vaultwarden

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.8"
services:
  vaultwarden:
    image: vaultwarden/server:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "8081:80"
    environment:
      DOMAIN: https://vault.yourdomain.com
      SIGNUPS_ALLOWED: true
      INVITATIONS_ALLOWED: true
      ADMIN_TOKEN: ${ADMIN_TOKEN}
    volumes:
      - vaultwarden-data:/data

volumes:
  vaultwarden-data:

Resource Usage: ~50MB RAM, less than 5% CPU

7. Uptime Kuma (Monitoring)

mkdir -p ~/uptime-kuma
cd ~/uptime-kuma

docker run -d \
  --name uptime-kuma \
  --restart always \
  -p 3001:3001 \
  -v uptime-kuma-data:/app/data \
  louislam/uptime-kuma:latest

Configure monitors for:

• All deployed services (HTTP checks every 60s)
• Server health (CPU, RAM, disk)
• SSL certificate expiry
• Alerts via email/Slack/Discord

Resource Usage: ~100MB RAM, less than 5% CPU

8. Chatwoot (Customer Support)

mkdir -p ~/chatwoot
cd ~/chatwoot

# docker-compose.yml (simplified version from earlier)
version: "3.8"
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:14-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: chatwoot
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: chatwoot_production
    volumes:
      - postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    restart: always

  chatwoot:
    image: chatwoot/chatwoot:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      RAILS_ENV: production
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: ${SECRET_KEY_BASE}
      POSTGRES_HOST: postgres
      POSTGRES_USERNAME: chatwoot
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DATABASE: chatwoot_production
      REDIS_URL: redis://redis:6379
      FRONTEND_URL: https://support.yourdomain.com
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - redis
    volumes:
      - chatwoot-storage:/app/storage

volumes:
  postgres-data:
  chatwoot-storage:

Resource Usage: ~400MB RAM, 10-20% CPU

Automated Backup Strategy

Daily Backups to Backblaze B2

Cost: $0.005/GB/month storage + $0.01/GB download (much cheaper than AWS S3)

Setup Backblaze:

1. Create account at backblaze.com
2. Create bucket: startup-backups
3. Generate application key

Install rclone:

curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash
rclone config  # Configure Backblaze B2

Backup Script:

nano ~/backup-all.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Backup all services to Backblaze B2

TIMESTAMP=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
BACKUP_DIR="/tmp/backups"
mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR

# Backup PostgreSQL databases
for service in mattermost gitlab plausible outline chatwoot; do
  docker compose -f ~/$service/docker-compose.yml exec -T postgres \
    pg_dumpall -U postgres | gzip > "$BACKUP_DIR/${service}_${TIMESTAMP}.sql.gz"
done

# Backup Vaultwarden data
tar -czf "$BACKUP_DIR/vaultwarden_${TIMESTAMP}.tar.gz" ~/vaultwarden/vaultwarden-data

# Upload to Backblaze
rclone sync $BACKUP_DIR b2:startup-backups/$(date +%Y-%m-%d)/

# Keep local backups for 7 days
find $BACKUP_DIR -name "*.gz" -mtime +7 -delete

# Verify backup
rclone ls b2:startup-backups/ | tail -10

echo "Backup completed: $(date)"

Make executable:

chmod +x ~/backup-all.sh

Schedule with cron:

crontab -e

# Daily backup at 2 AM
0 2 * * * /root/backup-all.sh >> /var/log/backups.log 2>&1

Estimated backup size:

• Databases: 100MB-1GB (depends on usage)
• Files: 1-5GB (depends on uploads)
• Total: 2-6GB/month
• Backblaze cost: $0.01-0.03/month

Retention policy:

• Daily backups: Keep 30 days
• Weekly backups: Keep 12 weeks
• Monthly backups: Keep forever

# Lifecycle policy (delete old daily backups)
rclone delete b2:startup-backups/ --min-age 30d

Cost Breakdown Analysis

Monthly Costs

Infrastructure:

• VPS Server 1 (Apps): €9 (~$10)
• VPS Server 2 (GitLab): €19 (~$21)
• VPS Server 3 (Analytics): €5 (~$5)
• Backblaze B2 Storage: $0.03 (6GB × $0.005)
• Domain registration: $1/month ($12/year ÷ 12)

Total: $37.03/month

Optional Add-ons:

• SendGrid (email): $0 (free tier: 100 emails/day)
• Cloudflare (CDN): $0 (free tier)
• Let's Encrypt (SSL): $0 (free)

Grand Total: $37/month ($444/year)

Year 1 Total Cost of Ownership

One-time costs:

• Domain registration: $12
• Initial setup time: 40 hours × $0 (founder time)

Recurring costs:

• VPS hosting: $444/year
• Backups: $4/year
• Total Year 1: $460

SaaS equivalent (10-person team):

• Slack Pro: $870/year
• GitHub Team: $528/year (4 devs)
• Notion Plus: $1,800/year (10 users)
• 1Password Teams: $960/year (10 users)
• Intercom: $888/year (base + 500 chats)
• Plausible: $228/year
• Google Analytics: $0 (free, but data mining)
• Pingdom: $120/year
• Total SaaS: $5,394/year

Savings: $4,934/year (91% reduction)

3-Year Projection

| Year | Self-Hosted | SaaS (10 users) | Savings | | ---- | ----------- | --------------- | --------- | | 1 | $460 | $5,394 | $4,934 | | 2 | $444 | $5,700 (+6%) | $5,256 | | 3 | $444 | $6,000 (+5%) | $5,556 | | Total | $1,348 | $17,094 | $15,746 (92%) |

Note: SaaS costs increase 5-10% annually. Self-hosted costs stay flat (actually decrease with VPS competition).

Team Size Scaling

| Team Size | Self-Hosted | SaaS | Savings | | --------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | | 5 users | $444/year | $3,000/year | $2,556 (85%)| | 10 users | $444/year | $5,400/year | $4,956 (92%)| | 20 users | $720/year | $10,800/year| $10,080 (93%)| | 50 users | $1,440/year | $27,000/year| $25,560 (95%)|

Key insight: Savings percentage increases as you scale because SaaS charges per-user while infrastructure scales more efficiently.

Maintenance Schedule

Daily (5 minutes)

• Check Uptime Kuma dashboard
• Review alerts (if any)
• Spot-check one service (rotate daily)

Automation: Set up Uptime Kuma to alert on failures. No daily check needed unless alert fires.

Weekly (15 minutes)

• Review resource usage (docker stats)
• Check disk space (df -h)
• Review backup logs
• Update one container (docker compose pull && docker compose up -d)

Monthly (1-2 hours)

• Update all containers
• Verify backup restore works (test one backup)
• Review security updates
• Check SSL certificate expiry (auto-renewed by Caddy, but verify)
• Review monitoring data for trends

Quarterly (2-3 hours)

• Full security audit
• Review and update documentation
• Test disaster recovery procedure
• Optimize resource allocation
• Plan capacity upgrades if needed

Total Time Investment

• Initial setup: 40 hours (one-time)
• Ongoing maintenance: 30 hours/year
• Total Year 1: 70 hours

ROI: $4,934 savings ÷ 70 hours = $70.50/hour return on time investment

Even if you value your time at $200/hour, you break even and start saving in Year 2.

Common Issues & Solutions

Issue: Server Running Out of Memory

Symptom: Services crashing, slow response times

Debug:

# Check memory usage
free -h
docker stats

# Identify memory hog
docker stats --no-stream | sort -k 4 -h

Solutions:

1. Add swap space:

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
# Make permanent
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

2. Optimize container resources:

# Add to docker-compose.yml
services:
  app:
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          memory: 512M

3. Upgrade VPS (increase RAM for $5-10/month)

Issue: Disk Space Full

Debug:

# Find large files
du -sh /* | sort -h
docker system df  # Docker disk usage

Solutions:

# Clean up Docker
docker system prune -a  # Remove unused images
docker volume prune     # Remove unused volumes

# Clean up old logs
journalctl --vacuum-time=7d

# Clean up old backups
find /tmp/backups -mtime +30 -delete

Issue: Service Won't Start After Restart

Debug:

# Check logs
docker compose logs service-name

# Common causes:
# - Database not ready (wait 30s, try again)
# - Port conflict (change port in docker-compose.yml)
# - Volume permission issue (chown -R 1000:1000 volume-dir)

Issue: Slow GitLab CI/CD

Optimize:

# In docker-compose.yml
gitlab:
  environment:
    GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
      # Use shared runners more efficiently
      gitlab_rails['ci_shared_runners_concurrency'] = 5
      # Reduce Sidekiq overhead
      sidekiq['max_concurrency'] = 5

Or use external CI runners on cheaper VPS.

Security Hardening Checklist

Essential Security Measures

1. Enable Automatic Security Updates

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

2. Configure Fail2Ban

sudo apt install fail2ban
sudo systemctl enable fail2ban

3. SSH Hardening

# Disable password auth (use SSH keys)
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin no

4. Enable Two-Factor Authentication

• Vaultwarden: Built-in 2FA support
• Mattermost: Enable MFA in system console
• GitLab: Enforce 2FA for all users

5. Regular Backups (Already Configured)

Verify backups work:

# Test restore from latest backup
cd ~/test-restore
# Extract and restore database

6. Monitoring & Alerts

Configure Uptime Kuma to alert via:

• Email (free via SendGrid)
• Slack/Mattermost webhook
• Discord webhook

7. Firewall Rules

# Only allow necessary ports
sudo ufw status
# Should only show: 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS)

8. SSL/TLS

Caddy auto-renews Let's Encrypt certificates. Verify:

docker compose -f ~/caddy/docker-compose.yml logs | grep certificate

Scaling Path

Phase 1: 1-10 Users (Current Setup)

• Cost: $37/month
• Servers: 3 VPS
• No changes needed

Phase 2: 10-25 Users

Upgrade:

• GitLab server: €19 → €39 (8 vCPU, 16GB RAM)
• Keep other servers same

New cost: $57/month (+$20) SaaS equivalent: $13,500/year (25 users) Savings: $12,816/year (95%)

Phase 3: 25-50 Users

Upgrade:

• Add dedicated database server: €19/month
• Move all PostgreSQL databases to dedicated server
• Enable Redis caching across services
• Add load balancer for Mattermost

New cost: $96/month (+$39) SaaS equivalent: $27,000/year (50 users) Savings: $25,848/year (96%)

Phase 4: 50-100+ Users

Architecture changes:

• Horizontal scaling (multiple app servers)
• Dedicated database cluster
• S3 for file storage
• CDN for static assets
• Managed monitoring (Datadog free tier)

New cost: $200-300/month SaaS equivalent: $54,000/year (100 users) Savings: $50,400/year (93%)

At this scale, consider:

• Hiring DevOps engineer part-time ($2,000/month)
• Still cheaper than SaaS: $5,000/month vs $4,500/month
• Break-even point: ~75 users

Migration Roadmap

Week 1: Infrastructure Setup

Days 1-2:

• Provision VPS servers
• Configure domains and DNS
• Set up SSH keys
• Install Docker on all servers

Days 3-4:

• Deploy Caddy (reverse proxy)
• Deploy Vaultwarden (password manager)
• Migrate team passwords

Days 5-7:

• Deploy Mattermost
• Create channels mirroring Slack
• Invite team (run parallel with Slack)

Week 2: Development Tools

Days 8-9:

• Deploy GitLab
• Mirror repositories from GitHub
• Set up CI/CD pipelines

Days 10-11:

• Deploy Plausible Analytics
• Add tracking script to website
• Run parallel with Google Analytics

Days 12-14:

• Deploy Outline
• Migrate documentation from Notion
• Train team on new docs platform

Week 3: Support & Monitoring

Days 15-16:

• Deploy Chatwoot
• Set up website widget
• Configure email integration

Days 17-18:

• Deploy Uptime Kuma
• Configure all monitors
• Set up alerting

Days 19-21:

• Configure automated backups
• Test restore procedures
• Document all deployments

Week 4: Transition & Optimization

Days 22-24:

• Full team migration to self-hosted tools
• Parallel run with SaaS for safety

Days 25-27:

• Monitor performance
• Optimize resource usage
• Fix any issues

Days 28-30:

• Cancel SaaS subscriptions
• Final verification
• Celebrate savings!

The Exit-Saas Perspective

SaaS companies optimize for revenue per customer, not value per dollar. Their pricing is anchored to "enterprise software" from the 2000s, when self-hosting required dedicated sysadmins.

Docker changed everything. One-command deployment democratized self-hosting. The complexity barrier collapsed.

Yet SaaS pricing stayed the same. Slack still charges $7.25/user/month even though their costs-per-user decreased 10x with containerization and cloud optimization.

The arbitrage: Your startup can capture that 10x improvement in economics. The complexity that justified SaaS pricing no longer exists, but the pricing remains.

The trade-off is real: You invest time upfront (40 hours) and ongoing (30 hours/year). You're responsible for uptime, security, backups. For well-funded startups optimizing for speed, SaaS makes sense.

But for bootstrapped startups optimizing for runway, self-hosting is mathematically superior:

• Year 1: $4,934 saved = 2+ months of runway extension
• Year 3: $15,746 saved = 6 months of runway
• Year 5: $25,000+ saved = hire a senior engineer

The opportunity cost of self-hosting is 70 hours/year. The opportunity cost of SaaS is $5,000-50,000/year in cash.

Choose based on your constraints. If time is scarce and capital is abundant, use SaaS. If capital is scarce and you're technical, self-host.

Ready to start? Begin with our Docker 101 guide, then deploy your first tool. Or explore our full directory of self-hosted alternatives.

Your SaaS subscriptions are optional. Your runway is finite. Choose accordingly.