Self Hosting: Run Your Own Website in 2025
Thinking about ditching a big hosting provider and taking control of your own site? You’re not alone. More developers and small businesses are moving to self hosting because it gives them flexibility, saves money, and lets them protect their data the way they want.
Why Self‑Host?
When you host your site on a shared or managed platform, you trade control for convenience. That works for many, but you also give up the ability to tweak server settings, choose exact software versions, or scale resources exactly when you need them. With a self‑hosted setup you decide where the server lives, how much you spend, and how you keep things secure.
Cost is a big driver. A modest virtual private server (VPS) can run under £10 a month, and if you already have an old desktop, you can repurpose it for free (aside from electricity). The trade‑off is that you’ll handle updates, backups, and firewall rules yourself.
Getting Started in 5 Simple Steps
1. Pick Your Hardware or Provider
Choose between a physical machine at home, a cheap VPS from a provider like DigitalOcean, or a cloud instance from AWS or GCP. For beginners, a low‑cost VPS is easy to set up and gives you remote access.
2. Choose an Operating System
Most self‑hosted sites run on Linux – Ubuntu Server LTS is popular because it’s well documented. If you’re comfortable with Windows, you can use Windows Server, but Linux tends to be lighter on resources.
3. Install a Web Server Stack
For a typical site you’ll need a web server (NGINX or Apache), a database (MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL), and a language runtime (PHP, Node.js, Python, etc.). Many providers offer one‑click “LAMP” or “LEMP” installers that set this up in minutes.
4. Secure Your Server
Set up a firewall (ufw on Ubuntu) to only allow ports 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). Get a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt – it renews automatically and keeps your traffic encrypted.
5. Deploy Your Site
Upload your files via SFTP or pull from a Git repo. Point your domain’s DNS A record to your server’s IP address. Test the site, then enable HTTPS in the web server config.
That’s it. You now have a live, self‑hosted website that you control from end‑to‑end.
Running your own server also means you can add extra services later – a personal email server, a VPN, or even a home automation hub. The sky’s the limit as long as you keep security in mind.
If you hit a snag, the web is full of tutorials that walk through each step. Our own blog has several posts that touch on related topics, like setting up a Python‑PHP bridge or optimizing performance for responsive design. Those articles give concrete code snippets you can drop into your setup.
Remember, self hosting isn’t a one‑time task. You’ll need to apply security patches, monitor storage, and back up data regularly. Set a monthly reminder to run apt update && apt upgrade (or the equivalent for your OS) and back up databases to another server or cloud bucket.
Ready to take the plunge? Grab a cheap VPS, follow the five steps above, and you’ll have a site you truly own. It feels great to see your domain point to a server you control, and you’ll learn a lot about how the web actually works along the way.
