I love self hosting. I run a Docker hosting platform that empowers everybody to self-host. I think every developer should know how to deploy their own stuff.
But even I have limits.
There’s a point where self hosting crosses the line from "empowering" to "why are you doing this to yourself" Not everything needs to be run on your 5 dollar VPS. Some things are best left to the hyperscalers or literally anyone else but you.
So here’s my hit list: 5 things that in my opinion should be illegal to self host unless you're doing it purely to learn or you run your own continent.
1. Email Servers
Self hosting email is like trying to win an Olympic medal in frustration. Getting your outbound emails delivered reliably is black magic wrapped in SPF records DKIM keys, rDNS, and reputation scores. One wrong move and you're in the Gmail spam folder or worse silently dropped.
It doesn’t matter how good your postfix config is. If you're not already on warmed up IPs with years of reputation you’re going to have a bad time. Just use Postmark, Mailgun, SES, or whatever. You’ll thank yourself later.
Unless you’re just sending cute project status emails to yourself this is one of the worst decisions you can make for a real app.
2. Object Storage
S3 clones like MinIO and SeaweedFS make it look easy to self host object storage. And sure spinning them up is easy. But keeping your data safe and durable? That’s a whole different game.
The entire point of object storage is durability. AWS has 11 nines of durability for a reason. They replicate across data centers you’ll never see. You? You're probably running a single node MinIO on a Hetzner box. One disk failure away from permanent regret.
Also economies of scale. Hyperscalers can afford to make object storage stupidly cheap. You can’t.
3. Your Own CDN
There are people out there building their own CDN. I’m not sure why but they exist. They spin up servers in 2 locations call it a global edge network and wonder why their latency sucks in South America.
CDNs are not just nginx with caching. They’re about routing, caching, purging, TLS termination, origin, shields, failover, and dozens of edge locations. You cannot fake that on a weekend project.
Just use Cloudflare. Or CloudFront. Or Bunny. Your users will love you for it.
4. Package Registries
Look I get it. You want to own your own supply chain. You don’t trust Docker Hub. You want your own private registry.
But unless you’re an actual platform provider like Sliplane you probably don’t need to self host your registry. DockerHub, GitHub Container Registry, and the cloud providers’ registries exist for a reason. They work they’re fast and they don’t lose layers when your disk fills up.
You can self host this. But should you? Probably not.
5. DNS Servers
This one should be a crime.
Unless you’re building your own TLD (can you even do that) or are deep into DNSSEC territory for fun there is absolutely zero reason to run your own DNS servers in production.
Buy your domain from someone reputable. Use a managed DNS provider. They’ll handle redundancy latency anycast and DDoS protection so you don’t have to.
Your cute little BIND9 container isn’t going to survive a botnet. And when DNS goes down your entire stack goes with it.
Final Thoughts
I’m not saying self hosting is bad. Quite the opposite. But part of being a good engineer is knowing what not to build yourself.
These five things are battle tested infrastructure layers that are cheap, fast. and reliable when used as a service and absolute chaos when self hosted without serious expertise.
Use your time wisely. Self host the fun stuff. Leave the rest to people who already burned a decade getting it right.
Cheers,
Jonas, Co-Founder Sliplane