Self-hosting saves money on subscriptions. But servers, setup time, and maintenance aren't free. Here's the honest math.
| Tier | Specs | Hetzner | DigitalOcean | Linode |
|---|
| Small (1-3 tools) | 2 vCPU, 4 GB | $4.50 | $24 | $24 |
| Medium (4-8 tools) | 4 vCPU, 8 GB | $7 | $48 | $48 |
| Large (10-15 tools) | 6 vCPU, 16 GB | $14 | $96 | $96 |
| Full stack (15+ tools) | 8 vCPU, 32 GB | $27 | $192 | $192 |
Additional costs:
| Item | Monthly Cost |
|---|
| Backups (Backblaze B2) | $1-5 |
| Domain name | $1 |
| SSL certificate | $0 (Let's Encrypt) |
| Email (SMTP relay) | $0-5 |
| Total extras | $2-11 |
| Tool Complexity | Setup Time | Examples |
|---|
| Simple | 30 min | Uptime Kuma, Plausible, Umami |
| Medium | 1-2 hours | Mattermost, Cal.com, Listmonk |
| Complex | 2-4 hours | Keycloak, Supabase, Grafana stack |
| Very complex | 4-8 hours | Nextcloud (with integrations), GitLab |
Typical full-stack setup (10 tools): 15-25 hours
| Your hourly rate | 20 hours setup |
|---|
| $50/hour | $1,000 one-time |
| $100/hour | $2,000 one-time |
| $150/hour | $3,000 one-time |
| Task | Monthly Time | Frequency |
|---|
| Update containers | 30 min | Weekly |
| Check monitoring dashboards | 15 min | Weekly |
| Review backups | 15 min | Monthly |
| Debug issues | 0-2 hours | As needed |
| Security patches | 30 min | Monthly |
| Storage cleanup | 15 min | Monthly |
| Total | 3-5 hours/month | |
| Your hourly rate | 4 hours/month | Annual |
|---|
| $50/hour | $200/month | $2,400 |
| $100/hour | $400/month | $4,800 |
| $150/hour | $600/month | $7,200 |
Tools: Mattermost, Plane, Outline, Plausible, Cal.com, Chatwoot, Listmonk, Vaultwarden, Uptime Kuma, n8n
| Cost Category | Year 1 | Year 2+ |
|---|
| Server (Hetzner, 8 GB) | $84 | $84 |
| Backups + extras | $72 | $72 |
| Setup time (20h × $100) | $2,000 | $0 |
| Maintenance (4h/mo × $100) | $4,800 | $4,800 |
| Total | $6,956 | $4,956 |
| SaaS Tool | Annual Cost (50 users) |
|---|
| Slack Pro | $5,250 |
| Jira Standard | $4,890 |
| Notion Plus | $7,200 |
| Google Analytics + CMP | $1,200 |
| Calendly Teams | $7,200 |
| Intercom Starter | $9,480 |
| Mailchimp Standard | $3,600 |
| 1Password Teams | $2,400 |
| Better Stack | $1,800 |
| Zapier Pro | $3,588 |
| Total | $46,608 |
| Year | Self-Hosted | SaaS | Savings |
|---|
| Year 1 | $6,956 | $46,608 | $39,652 (85%) |
| Year 2 | $4,956 | $46,608 | $41,652 (89%) |
| Year 3 | $4,956 | $46,608 | $41,652 (89%) |
| 3-Year Total | $16,868 | $139,824 | $122,956 (88%) |
- Watchtower for automatic Docker updates
- Cron jobs for backups
- Uptime Kuma for monitoring
- Ansible playbooks for repeatable setup
- Coolify ($0 self-hosted) — handles deployments, SSL, backups
- Reduces maintenance by ~60%
- Setup: 1 hour instead of 20
- Single PostgreSQL for multiple tools
- Single Redis instance
- Shared reverse proxy (Caddy)
- Shared SMTP credentials
- Write runbooks for common tasks
- Document your Docker Compose files
- Keep a recovery checklist
| Scenario | Why |
|---|
| Solo founder, no DevOps skills | Time cost too high, steep learning curve |
| Team < 5 | SaaS free tiers are usually enough |
| Rapidly scaling (10→100 users in months) | Focus on product, not infrastructure |
| Highly regulated (HIPAA without expertise) | Compliance risk without dedicated security team |
| Mission-critical uptime (99.99%) | SaaS has better SLAs than most self-hosted setups |
| Scenario | Why |
|---|
| Team > 20 | Savings exceed maintenance costs significantly |
| Have DevOps person | Marginal cost of maintenance is near zero |
| Data sovereignty required | GDPR, government, regulated industries |
| Predictable costs needed | No per-seat surprises as you grow |
| Already running servers | Infrastructure cost is already paid |
Self-hosting a 10-tool stack for a 50-person team costs ~$5,000/year (after Year 1 setup). The equivalent SaaS costs $46,600/year.
Even accounting for the highest maintenance estimates, self-hosting saves 85-89% — that's $40,000+/year back in your budget.
The key variable is your time cost. If you value your time at $100/hour and spend 4 hours/month on maintenance, that's $4,800/year — still a massive net savings.
Find the best open source alternative for every SaaS tool at OSSAlt.
