Most people jump straight to Jellyfin, but these 5 self-hosted services matter more

Published Aug 20, 2026, 10:30 AM EDT After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh). Self-hosting gives you control over your own data while retaining the functionality of paid cloud services. You're not forced to rely on external servers to keep your data safe from loss and misuse. Most people who get into self-hosting start with a media server like Jellyfin, since it offers familiar territory and instant results. Before you skip to self-hosting your media library, it's important to lay the foundation of your home server. If you've decided to self-host your data, why not do it properly? You should start with a backup strategy, a password manager, a monitoring dashboard, and a reverse proxy setup. These self-hosted services will benefit not only your media server, but every service you set up on your server. Kopia Data backup before everything else Before you get carried away with which subscriptions you can cancel after self-hosting your data, you must think about protecting said data. When you're using paid services, the onus of keeping your data lies with the cloud provider. When you're self-hosting, that responsibility shifts to you, so having a reliable and easy-to-use backup service is essential. Kopia is exactly that, offering a GUI version in addition to the CLI version that you can use without a lot of setup. Once you're done with the initial configuration, Kopia just asks you to point it to a backup location. It takes point-in-time snapshots of your data, writing to storage only when the data changes. Encryption is handled before your data is copied over to the target location. Restoring backups is straightforward, and the tool is lightweight, too. Your media files might be recoverable, but your carefully built metadata, watch history, profiles, and container configurations need backups. You can get a media server up and running in minutes, but it's the backend stack that truly ensures that it's built to last. Kopia Uptime Kuma No self-hosted stack stays online forever Building your home server is fun, as you delve into powerful self-hosted services, but it will inevitably encounter outages. It could be due to human error, malfunctioning hardware, or broken images. In any case, having a monitoring dashboard, hosted separately, of course, comes in handy. It can alert you the moment any of your services goes down, so you can act proactively instead of reacting to a family member's desperate text. Uptime Kuma is one of the most popular utilities for this job. It constantly monitors your server for any downtime, and can even capture certificate expiry and response time information for your services. The best part is that you can configure automated alerts via Telegram, Discord, GoAlert, and many other platforms, so you're always up to speed. A Docker container is the simplest way to set up Uptime Kuma on a separate Raspberry Pi, mini PC, or NAS. Uptime Kuma Key highlights Open-source monitor Nginx Proxy Manager Access your services from the internet The moment you want to access your Jellyfin server, or any other service, from outside your local network, you need a reverse proxy to do it properly. Nginx Proxy Manager is one of the easiest ways to set up a reverse proxy for your home server. It has a web-based GUI, is easy to set up using a Docker container, and still doesn't skip the option of advanced configuration. With a reverse proxy, you can securely expose all your self-hosted services to the internet using a simple domain name instead of IP addresses and port combinations. Most people run Nginx Proxy Manager on the main home server, but you can choose to host it separately for uptime and security isolation. Nginx Proxy Manager Vaultwarden Keep your passwords safe Online password managers suffice for most users, but your information is still stored on someone else's server. If someone gains access to your Google account, for instance, they can potentially see all your stored passwords. An alternative, like Bitwarden, uses a separate master password, employs zero-knowledge encryption, and is regularly audited, making your passwords considerably more secure. Vaultwarden is an unofficial self-hosted server for Bitwarden, written in Rust and maintained by the community. It offers many premium features of Bitwarden for free, is simpler to set up, and is less resource-intensive. Your passwords are no longer the target of database breaches, and you can also set up custom firewall and isolation rules on your self-hosted setup. Control and customization are what make Vaultwarden a great password manager. Vaultwarden Key highlights Self-hosted Bitwarden alternative Nextcloud Your next cloud service awaits Nextcloud can be overwhelming for the home lab beginner, but it's still one of the best self-hosted cloud storage services. It offers a suite of services, but Nextcloud Files is often enough for most users. It allows you to store all your important documents, photos, videos, and everything else on your own storage. You can still sync them across devices and access them from the wider internet, just like on a commercial cloud service. Specialized services for photo storage, such as Immich, are better if you only want a Google Photos replacement, but Nextcloud offers more functionality. It's more of a Google Drive replacement, plus it also allows you to set up your calendar, email client, and to-do list. For someone escaping Google's clutches, Nextcloud is one of the best self-hosted alternatives. Nextcloud OS Windows, macOS, Linux Key highlights Self-hosted, open source iOS compatible Yes Android compatible Yes Desktop compatible Yes Nextcloud is a local cloud storage tool with all the features that you need and an equally powerful plugin store. A media server is exciting, but don't forget self-hosting essentials Setting up Jellyfin on your home server gives you control over your media, but you need to extend this philosophy to the basics first. Setting up a self-hosted backup service, reverse proxy, password manager, and cloud storage repository should be in place before you focus on building your media library.