If you’re not cycling a pedal-powered generator to run your system then is it really self-hosted? My servers only use organic transistors grown in my zen garden.

It’s self hosting. Is it home lab? Nope. Though plenty of people use VPS as a way to terminate their VPN connections and such.

I would say that the software side all qualifies. You’re setting up the full software stack; that’s definitely self-“something”.

I, personally, would only consider it “self hosting” if I can take a sledge hammer to the bare metal without getting arrested.

But, I acknowledge that is an arbitrary, puritanical distinction. I don’t look down on VPS; they have specific pros and cons, and I use them myself. I just think that “self hosting” includes hardware factors, not just the software.

Self-hosting isn’t only just about owning the metal, but it’s also the freedom to configure things the way you want, and to be sovereign of your data.

I think it counts. You always have the option of taking your data with you and go elsewhere which is one of the main points of self-hosting, being in control of your data. If they jack up the prices or whatever, you just pack up, you never have to pay or else.

Also hosting an email server at home would be an absolute nightmare, took me 10+ years to get that IP rep and I’m holding on to it as long as I can.

I have a mix of it: private services run at home, public ones run on a bare metal server I rent. I still get the full benefits of having my own NextCloud and all. Ultimately even at home, I’d still be renting an Internet connection, unless you have a local only server.

Self-hosting is just a generalized term for running your own stacks instead of just using the standard corpo stuff. It’s not a regimen or lifestyle or anything like that. Don’t worry about the terminology.

i’d argue yes. if it’s just a plain linux vps without any additional services, you’re still doing plenty of setup yourself.

Yes, that still counts