Building a Self-Hosted Development Stack

One of my core principles is self-hosted first — minimizing external SaaS dependencies and recurring costs. Here's how I built a complete development environment on a single VPS.

The Hardware

Everything runs on a Hostinger KVM8 VPS:

• 8 vCPU
• 32GB RAM
• 400GB NVMe

This handles everything comfortably with headroom to spare.

The Services

| Service | Purpose | RAM Usage | |---------|---------|-----------| | Forgejo | Git hosting | ~512MB | | Authentik | SSO/Auth | ~3GB | | Coolify | Deployment | ~1.5GB | | PostgreSQL | Database | ~1GB | | Caddy | Reverse proxy | ~50MB |

Why Self-Host?

The cost comparison speaks for itself:

• Cloud services for a team of 5: $150-300+/month
• Self-hosted on a single VPS: ~$25/month

That's a 6-12x cost reduction while maintaining full control over your data. #selfhosted #devops

Key Takeaways

1. Start with the essentials: Git, CI/CD, and a database
2. Add services as needed — don't over-engineer from day one
3. Use Docker Compose for reproducible deployments
4. Monitor everything with Uptime Kuma

The self-hosted path isn't for everyone, but if you value data sovereignty and cost efficiency, it's worth the investment. #infrastructure