I know it’s a rude question, but it’s been on my mind… I’m wondering roughly what I should be expecting to outlay when I finish my set-up? So I’m assuming it includes things like domain names, hosting for backups, email providers, VPN, etc. What’s a good budget to set?
I run a pretty hefty home lab, so my costs are fairly high compared to some.
- Electricity: $70/mo
- Internet: $55/mo (1000x35)
- Cloud backup: $20/mo
- Web firewall/IDS/IPS: $8.30/mo ($99/yr)
- Domain/email: $15/yr
- VPS: $1/mo
Overall: $155/mo
Is the firewall something you’ve needed?
I expose quite a few services to the web, so having that extra layer of protection is nice. And it allows me to control what leaves my network from an application perspective, not just TCP/UDP
I largely run raspberry pis so my electric costs are likely minimal (I’ve never calculated it). Besides that:
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PIA VPN: ~$4/mo
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Digital Ocean Droplet + Backup snapshots: $7/mo
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Domains: ~$25/year
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Backblaze B2 backups: $7/mo
Thanks actually quite reasonable.
Self hosting is actually crazy cheap compared to any kind of corporate solution. Anybody paying for SquareSpace, for instance, could cut their cost by a factor of 20 or more with a FOSS alternative like Ghost Blog.
I know my setup is over engineered a little so I pay a bit more, but my expenses are still under $100 per year for subscription services that support the self hosting.
$2.50 per month for a VPN.
$40 per year for two VPS’s (this is what I know I overpay for since I didn’t really know how much I needed when I set it up, but the time to change it is worth more to me than the extra $10 per year).
$17ish per year for a domain name.
Plex lifetime pass (around $100 one time).
And of course, ten million dollars in man hours spent learning how to use Linux.
Those man hours rack up, but I bet you still feel exhilarated when you get something working or fix something.
My wife says she wishes she could make me scream like Linux does. I told her she would if I could put it in her bash.
She leaves me alone when I’m on the computer now. It’s quiet in here.
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