December 28, 2025
Forks, fees, and RAM-ageddon
Self-hosting is being enshittified
Prices spike, apps add paywalls, and commenters ask: is DIY tech still worth it
TLDR: Self-hosting lovers say 2025 brought rising hardware costs and popular apps adding fees and limits. Commenters split between doom, pragmatism (“just don’t update”), and optimism that DIY hosting is still viable, highlighting a bigger fight over trust and control in the tools people run at home.
Self-hosters are sounding the alarm: 2025 felt like a double whammy. Hardware prices shot up—RAM priced like truffles, storage jumping 50% in a month, GPUs throttled—and fans rushed to lock in gear like a panic buy at the tech supermarket after a GamersNexus warning. Meanwhile, beloved tools started acting… not so beloved. Plex slapped a paywall on remote streaming and got called out for selling personal data. MinIO nuked its admin dashboard and shoved the open version into maintenance. Mattermost dropped a 10K message cap, prompting the viral eye-roll: “Our server, our database, but it’s limited to 10K.”
Cue the comment section cage match. PessimalDecimal grumbled that two-thirds of the article was price talk—“where’s the enshittification?”—while others declared, “everything is being enshittified,” full stop. The pragmatists chimed in: just don’t update and fork (copy) the good version. Optimists pushed back with a vibe check: free tools like Let’s Encrypt (which makes sites “secure” for free) and one-click setups still make DIY hosting doable, plus cool projects like Immich, Gitea, and Forgejo are booming as mainstream creators hype self-hosting. Jokes flew: “paywall for your own movies,” “1990 vibes—write your own tools,” and the new meme of the week—RAM-ageddon meets Plex-pocalypse.
Key Points
- •The article states self-hosting became more mainstream in 2025, with increased adoption of projects like Immich and greater relevance of Gitea and Forgejo following GitHub’s runner pricing changes.
- •Hardware costs are described as surging: DRAM ~3–4x since September 2025, flash prices rising, and RAM priced at $10/GB on Framework laptops.
- •A Samsung 990 Pro 1TB NVMe drive reportedly rose ~50% in a month; Nvidia is said to be cutting GeForce production by 40% next year; Raspberry Pi introduced an RPi 5 1GB model and raised prices.
- •The article claims several self-hosted software projects made adverse changes: Plex added a paid remote streaming license and sells personal data; MinIO removed its admin UI and moved its open-source variant into maintenance; Mattermost set a 10K message limit.
- •It concludes that self-hosting will remain challenging and advises selecting software carefully and maintaining readiness to migrate as changes and breakage are expected.