Self-hosted software, priced honestly
Almost every SaaS bill you pay has a self-hosted equivalent that runs in Docker on one VPS. The licence is free; the server and your attention are not. This section covers 23 tools across eight categories, each with a copy-paste docker-compose.yml, a measured RAM footprint, and the VPS tier the stack actually needs.
Start with the cost, because it decides most of these questions. A 4 GB managed VPS on Liquid Web is $72/mo subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 at the regular rate. If the SaaS you want to replace costs less than that, self-hosting loses on money alone, and the only remaining reason to do it is data control.
Which self-hosted tool replaces the SaaS I pay for?
Find the product you are already paying for, then open the guide. The tier column is the size our own deployment guide recommends, not the project's stated minimum.
| SaaS you're replacing | Self-hosted tool | Guide | Tier our guide recommends |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot, Salesforce | Twenty CRM | Twenty CRM | 8 GB |
| Intercom, Zendesk | Chatwoot | Chatwoot | 8 GB |
| ActiveCampaign, Marketo | Mautic | Mautic | 8 GB |
| Mailchimp newsletters | Listmonk | Listmonk | 4 GB |
| SendGrid, Postmark | Billionmail | Billionmail | 8 GB + dedicated IP |
| Calendly | Cal.diy (MIT fork of Cal.com) | Cal.diy | 4 GB |
| Typeform | Formbricks | Formbricks | 8 GB |
| Google Analytics | Plausible or Umami | Plausible, Umami | 4 GB |
| Mixpanel, Amplitude | PostHog | PostHog | 16 GB |
| Notion, Confluence | Outline | Outline | 4 GB |
| Linear, Jira | Plane | Plane | 8 GB |
| Auth0, Okta | Authentik | Authentik | 4 GB |
| Google Photos, iCloud | Immich | Immich | 16 GB |
| Heroku, Render, Vercel | Coolify or Dokploy | Coolify, Dokploy | 4 GB self-managed |
| OpenAI API spend | Ollama, LiteLLM | Ollama, LiteLLM | 4 GB CPU, or a GPU box |
| ChatGPT's web UI | Open WebUI | Open WebUI | 4 GB |
| OpenAI Assistants, agent builders | Dify | Dify | 16 GB |
| Hosted AI assistants | OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, NemoClaw | AI assistants | 4-8 GB |
Nothing here replaces a scraping platform. Crawling infrastructure is the one workload where running your own boxes reliably costs more than renting, because the recurring expense is proxies and blocked requests rather than CPU. That job belongs on Apify.
What does the server actually cost?
Checked live on 2026-09-09. Liquid Web's advertised prices are promotional and the page states the terms as "Save 50% for 2 mos", so the second number is what you pay from month three onward. Both are listed here because most roundups quote only the first.
| Tier | Self-managed | Managed | Stacks that fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB / 30 GB | $5/mo | not offered | Too small for anything in this section |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB | $8.50, then $17 | $36, then $72 | Umami, Plausible, Listmonk, Outline, Cal.diy, Authentik, LiteLLM, Open WebUI, Coolify, Dokploy |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 240 GB | $22.50, then $45 | $50, then $100 | Twenty CRM, Chatwoot, Mautic, Plane, Billionmail, Formbricks |
| 6 vCPU / 16 GB / 440 GB | $45, then $90 | $72.50, then $145 | Dify, PostHog, Immich |
| 6 vCPU / 24 GB / 540 GB | not offered | $89, then $178 | Two of the 8 GB stacks on one box |
Prices verified 2026-09-09 against Liquid Web Managed VPS and Liquid Web Self-Managed VPS.
The gap between the two price columns is the cost of not being your own sysadmin. Self-managed means you own patching, monitoring, and the 2 a.m. page. On the 8 GB tier that is $55/mo at regular rates. Decide which side of that line you are on before you pick a tool.
When is self-hosting the wrong call?
Four cases where we tell readers to stay on the SaaS.
- The project itself says not to. PostHog's own documentation calls self-hosted deployments "officially unsupported", asks for the equivalent of "a Hetzner VM with 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM, and more than 30GB storage", and steers anyone under roughly 300k events a month toward PostHog Cloud, which includes 1M free events monthly (posthog.com/docs/self-host, checked 2026-09-09). Our PostHog guide exists to document that, not to talk you past it.
- Your SaaS bill is under $72/mo. That is the regular rate on the smallest managed VPS. Replacing a $20/mo tool with a $72/mo server is a loss unless data residency is the point.
- Deliverability is the product. Self-hosted email needs a dedicated IP and a warming period. If your sender reputation earns revenue, a hosted relay behind Listmonk is usually the better shape than running your own SMTP.
- Nobody owns the box. These stacks need backups, upgrades, and TLS renewal. Without a named person responsible, the honest answer is a managed tier or a SaaS subscription.
How do we test these stacks?
Every singleton and combo is deployed on local Docker with a host sized to match the recommended Liquid Web tier, for example 4 vCPU / 8 GB for an 8 GB Managed VPS recommendation. Footprint readings disclose this exactly: equivalent specs, expected to behave the same on Liquid Web. Where a project has shipped a major version since we last measured, the guide says so and withholds the number rather than reprinting a stale one.
The eight categories
- AI / LLM ops: Ollama, LiteLLM, Open WebUI, Dify, plus vLLM, Flowise, AnythingLLM and LibreChat
- AI assistants: OpenClaw, NemoClaw, Hermes Agent
- CRM & GTM: Twenty CRM, Mautic, Billionmail, Listmonk, Chatwoot, Cal.diy, Formbricks, plus Postal
- Analytics: Plausible, Umami, PostHog
- Identity: Authentik, plus Keycloak and Pocket ID
- DevOps & PaaS: Coolify, Dokploy
- Productivity: Outline, Plane, plus Karakeep
- Media & storage: Immich
Liquid Web or Nexcess?
For infrastructure you shape yourself (VPS, dedicated, GPU, HIPAA, HA clusters, managed databases), we point readers at Liquid Web. For managed application stacks (WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Drupal), we point them at Nexcess, its sister brand with an app-grade focus. The full routing matrix is in the brand comparison.
If your workload is a Docker Compose file, it is a VPS question, and the tier table above is the whole decision.
Common questions
Yes, and the tier table assumes you might. Two 4 GB-tier stacks fit comfortably on the 8 GB tier. What breaks is stacking two database-heavy tools, since PostgreSQL, Redis, and a vector store each hold their own resident memory. Each guide publishes the idle footprint so you can add them up before you buy.
At regular rates the 8 GB tier is $45/mo self-managed against $100/mo managed (Liquid Web, verified 2026-09-09). That $55/mo buys patching, monitoring, and support. If you already run servers, take the saving. If this is your first one, the managed tier is cheaper than an outage.
The docker-compose.yml files are host-agnostic and run on any Ubuntu box with Docker. We test on hardware matched to a Liquid Web tier and say so, because we earn a commission there and you should be able to price the alternative yourself.
The eight category pages list projects we have written up plus ones we track but have not deployed yet, such as Keycloak, Postal, and Karakeep. Start with the general self-hosting guide for the architecture and backup decisions that apply regardless of which tool you pick.