I replaced three cloud subscriptions with my own server, and Tailscale makes it work anywhere

Published Oct 26, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT João has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem. I also love all things tech and videogames, especially Nintendo, which he's always happy to talk about. Prior to joining XDA in 2021, he worked at Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/jo%C3%A3o-carrasqueira/ Saving money is one of the big reasons people can get into self-hosting, though whether that actually works out really depends on what you're doing with your server. Just replacing cloud storage with a home server may not actually be cheaper, but once you start replacing enough services, it can make a positive difference. For my part, my self-hosting server lets me sync my passwords, photos, and notes across all my devices, and I can access them from anywhere thanks to Tailscale. That has allowed me to replace three whole cloud plans I used to pay for, and I don't see myself going back. Bitwarden syncs my passwords Don't need the premium plan anymore There are plenty of great password managers out there, including some solid free options like KeePassXC. But I've always heard good things about Bitwarden, so that's where I eventually landed, and initially, the premium plan seemed like a requirement, especially with it providing integration with one-time authentication codes. It wasn't overly expensive, but it's still a cost I didn't really want. Thankfully, Bitwarden also offers the option to connect to a self-hosted server, and that comes at no cost. I simply had to create a Vaultwarden server, connect my Bitwarden apps and extensions to it, and I was ready to go. Bitwarden updates and saves my vault information locally, so I don't need a persistent connection all the time, but when I do, Tailscale allows me to connect to my server back home and get the latest information for signing in to my other services. I really love the integration with one-time authentication codes, because it addresses the worst part about using them. Bitwarden brings up the codes I need right as I need them, and it all works seamlessly. No need to hunt for my phone to access my authenticator app, it just works on any device I have. My family photos are all on Immich Goodbye, OneDrive (and Google Photos) The biggest savings I got from self-hosting, however, was actually in the form of my photos, documents, and other files, which I used to store on OneDrive. This is a fairly expensive subscription that cost me $70 per year when I still had it, though the same plan now costs $100/year thanks to Copilot integration. Self-hosting allowed me to move all my photos to Immich, a self-hosted gallery that has a modern UI very reminiscent of Google Photos. It looks and feels modern, it lets me organize pictures into albums, and it even supports locally-hosted facial recognition so I can find pictures of a specific person more quickly. Map data is also saved if I want it to be, I can go over potential duplicates and clean up my gallery, and there are new features being added all the time. It's great. I'm only counting this as one subscription because it's my own, but Immich also stores my wife's photos, and she used to pay for Google One to store them, so we're technically saving on two subscriptions here. Likewise, our documents are stored on Nextcloud, which offers an intuitive UI for managing files and can be expanded with all kinds of apps, including a built-in Office suite for editing documents. Obsidian syncs for free, too Who needs Obsidian sync? Finally, there's the matter of notes, and one of the most popular was to keep notes these days is Obsidian. I used to use OneNote, but I'm trying to move away from Microsoft products, and it was frustrating to realize that to sync my notes on Obsidian, I'd have to pay $4 a month for Obsidian Sync. Thankfully, Obsidian community plugins come to the rescue here, and LiveSync is a great one. I can deploy a new LiveSync server relatively easily and then connect my apps to it to keep all my notes in sync across devices. It's exactly the experience I expected after using OneNote for so long, though arguably it's even faster and more reliable. Tailscale is free, but there's a catch You may need more than that Tailscale allows me to access all of these servers remotely and cut down on subscription costs, which is great. Tailscale itself is free and supports up to three users this way, so it's perfect for my wife and myself. However, I would be remiss not to mention that there's another cost you may have to deal with here: a domain. You can probably get away with accessing some of these services remotely by just connecting to the IP addresses directly, but things like Bitwarden and Obsidian require an HTTPS connection with a verifiable security certificate, which usually means you need to use something like a reverse proxy to encrypt the connection, and that means buying a domain. Still, the cost associated with my personal domain is just $12 for an entire year, and that's less than Bitwarden, which is the cheapest subscription of the bunch at around $20 per year. It's still easily worth it, and that's not even including the privacy and security benefits of having all my data stored on my own server. I'm not going back to cloud services Being able to stop spending this kind of money on cloud services is one of the big motivators that got me into self-hosting, and these three services make it clearer than any other. Add the privacy benefits and the fact that all this data is in my hands, and it makes self-hosting all the more worthwhile.