this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Selfhosted

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What are your favorite low-footprint self-hosted services? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello everyone!

I recently switched my Android phone to a custom ROM, and while setting things up, I wanted push notifications without relying on Google. That’s how I discovered UnifiedPush.

Really liking the concept, I decided to rent a small VPS (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM) and started hosting NTFY. So far, it's been working great. Over time, I’ve added a few more services like FreshRSS and Audiobookshelf.

All of this is just for personal use, so the resource usage is minimal (the whole setup only uses around 500MB of RAM). I really enjoy how much value you can get out of such a small machine.

That brings me to my question:

What other lightweight, self-hostable tools would you recommend? I’m especially interested in small, resource-efficient services that you’ve personally found useful.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

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[–] ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pub 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Small static websites. You can get surprisingly performant and easily managed websites if you don't actually need the overhead of common frameworks. For instance giving your kid a real domain they can update and show to their friends.

On the slightly more resource intensive side, OpnSense has been a game changer for me.

[–] tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 months ago

I’m a big fan of static site generators. For the websites I maintain, switching from WordPress to Hugo reduced my workload a lot.

I set up a workflow using DecapCMS + Hugo + GitHub. Non-technical users can log in via GitHub to edit content on the CMS, and GitHub Actions automatically builds and deploys the site via SFTP.

GitHub is kinda meh, but it’s low-cost and gets the job done.

[–] confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For blogs I found two interesting projects that are super minimal. BashWrite uses only bash and sed commands but it seems to be no longer under development.

Another bash script that seems to have more development activity is BSSG. This one requires a markdown processor such as cmark or pandoc but it's still quite minimal.

I love minimalism and writing scripts so these two projects really interest me.

[–] ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pub 2 points 2 months ago

Well now you've got me trying BSSG :p

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm in the process of switching from ipfire to opnsense myself.

I hate how bloaty opnsense is at first glance but it has so much more control so once I copy my current config I'll be leaving ipfire in the dust.

[–] ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pub 2 points 2 months ago

Nice. Haven't tried IpFire but gonna give it a look. Been on OpnSense for a couple years now and have been enjoying it.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think you will be back at Ipfire soon. OPNsense is a confusing mess and while IPfire certainly has its issues, at least it is easy to understand and it does what it is supposed to.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

yea I have the machine backed up in case this happens. I have noticed that its a mess UI wise. But ipfire doesn't seem to be stable. every few months it'll randomly kill itself which will take everything on the network down until i manually restart the machine and then force tell it a new DNS server. It's something I've never managed to resolve on the machine, and I don't seem to have that issue with my test network with OPNsense.