Guides

Most note-taking apps want you to pay monthly, sync through their cloud, or install an Electron app that eats 500MB of RAM. Memos takes a different approach: it’s a single binary that stores everything in SQLite, looks like a Twitter feed for your thoughts, and exposes a full API for automation. What is Memos? Memos is a self-hosted, open-source note-taking service built with Go and React. Think of it as a private micro-blog for quick thoughts, bookmarks, code snippets, and daily notes. Everything is stored locally, rendered in Markdown, and accessible through a clean web UI or REST API. ...

If you’re running multiple Docker services and juggling Nginx configs every time you add a container, Traefik will change your life. It watches Docker for new containers and automatically configures routing — no config file edits, no reloads, no downtime. What is Traefik? Traefik is a modern reverse proxy and load balancer designed for microservices and containers. Version 3 brought HTTP/3 support, WASM plugins, and a cleaner configuration model. It sits in front of all your services, handles SSL termination, and routes traffic based on Docker labels. ...

YouTube videos disappear all the time. Channels get deleted, videos go private, content gets region-locked, and suddenly that tutorial or lecture you bookmarked six months ago is gone forever. Tube Archivist solves this by letting you build your own personal YouTube archive — complete with metadata, thumbnails, subtitles, and a slick search interface. What is Tube Archivist? Tube Archivist is an open-source, self-hosted YouTube media server. Think of it as Plex or Jellyfin, but specifically designed for YouTube content. It downloads videos using yt-dlp under the hood, indexes everything in Elasticsearch for fast full-text search, and presents it all through a clean web interface. ...

If your team’s documentation lives in scattered Google Docs, random Notion pages, and Slack messages nobody can find — Outline is the fix. It’s a fast, beautiful, open-source wiki that feels like a modern app instead of a dusty Wikipedia clone. What is Outline? Outline is a self-hosted knowledge base and wiki built with React and Node.js. It supports real-time collaborative editing, Markdown, nested document collections, and blazing-fast search. Think of it as Notion’s wiki feature, but running on your own hardware. ...

Google Analytics is powerful, but it comes with a cost: your visitors’ privacy. Umami is a self-hosted analytics platform that gives you the insights you need without cookies, fingerprinting, or sending data to third parties. It’s lightweight, GDPR-compliant out of the box, and looks great doing it. What is Umami? Umami is an open-source, privacy-focused web analytics tool built with Next.js and PostgreSQL (or MySQL). It tracks page views, referrers, devices, and more — all without cookies or personal data collection. The dashboard is clean, fast, and does exactly what you need without the bloat of Google Analytics. ...

Excalidraw is one of those tools that looks deceptively simple — a hand-drawn style whiteboard in your browser — but once you start using it, you realize it’s replaced half your diagramming stack. Architecture diagrams, flowcharts, wireframes, quick sketches during meetings — it handles all of it with a clean, intuitive interface. The hosted version at excalidraw.com works great, but self-hosting gives you full control over your data, private collaboration without third-party servers, and the ability to embed it into your own workflows. ...

Every developer has a collection of bookmarked websites for encoding Base64, generating UUIDs, converting timestamps, or formatting JSON. What if all of those lived on your own server in a single, clean interface? That’s IT-Tools — a Swiss Army knife of developer utilities packed into one Docker container. What is IT-Tools? IT-Tools is a self-hosted web application built with Vue.js that bundles over 80 useful utilities for developers, sysadmins, and power users. Everything runs client-side in your browser — the server just serves the static files. No data leaves your machine. ...

If Trello’s pricing changes and data policies have you looking for alternatives, Planka is one of the best self-hosted Kanban boards available. It’s clean, fast, supports real-time collaboration, and runs beautifully in Docker. What is Planka? Planka is an open-source, self-hosted project management tool built around Kanban boards. Think Trello, but running on your own hardware with no account limits, no feature gates, and no subscription fees. Why Self-Host Your Project Management? Privacy: Your project data stays on your server No user limits: Add your entire team without per-seat pricing No feature restrictions: All features available out of the box Real-time sync: Changes appear instantly across all connected users Markdown support: Rich card descriptions with full markdown editing 100+ notification providers: Slack, Discord, email, and more SSO support: OpenID Connect integration for enterprise environments Prerequisites Before starting, you’ll need: ...

Push notifications are the backbone of modern alerting. Server went down? Backup failed? Someone logged into your machine? You want to know now, not when you check your email three hours later. Ntfy (pronounced “notify”) lets you send push notifications to your phone or desktop using simple HTTP requests. No app registration, no Firebase setup, no Google Cloud accounts. Just curl and done. What is Ntfy? Ntfy is a self-hosted, HTTP-based pub-sub notification service. You publish messages to “topics” (think of them as channels), and any device subscribed to that topic gets the notification instantly. It works over HTTP, WebSockets, and has native apps for Android and iOS. ...

If you’ve ever wanted a private file hosting service that works seamlessly with ShareX, Flameshot, or any screenshot tool — Zipline is exactly what you need. It’s fast, modern, and packed with features that make Imgur uploads feel prehistoric. What is Zipline? Zipline is a self-hosted file hosting server built with Next.js. It handles image uploads, file sharing, URL shortening, and text pastes — all through a clean web dashboard or API. The killer feature? Native ShareX and Flameshot integration, so your screenshots go straight to your own server instead of some third-party service. ...