Hi everyone,
I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.
To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.
🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls
This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.
If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.
Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project ([email protected])!
Cheers!
Just filled it out in case you still need answers. Small note, your education answers don’t include “none”. While uncommon, some people never finished school and there is no option for that.
Done. Nobody else wants to know why I have 3 RasPi’s running stuff around the house, so I get to tell you in the survey, lol.
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Done. Hope it helps.
Done! I’ve been selfhosting for over 20 years now.
I use self-hosted services in the following categories as much as possible…
That question could really use a “not applicable” option. I don’t operate any home automation solutions, so any answer from me would be invalid, and neutral answers because the item is not relevant will appear the same as neutral answers because I use both self-hosted and externally hosted solutions (e.g. Mullvad for privacy and Tailscale to get around CGNAT).
Thanks for the comment: that’s a really good point to raise.
Just to clarify: the statement “I use self-hosted services in the following categories as much as possible” is meant to reflect how fully you make use of self-hosted solutions in each area. A response like “Strongly agree” would indicate that you actively use and take full advantage of self-hosting in that category.
If you don’t use solutions in a particular category at all — whether that’s because you don’t need them, aren’t interested, or use only external services — then it’s completely appropriate to select a disagreeing option (e.g. “Disagree” or “Strongly disagree”). In this context, lower agreement simply indicates low or no use, regardless of the reason.
From a methodological standpoint, the data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). This approach requires a complete set of responses across the measured constructs. If we included a “not applicable” option, it would create missing values in the dataset and potentially lead to excluding the entire response for that part of the analysis — which would significantly reduce the usable sample size.
That said, I really appreciate your feedback! :)
I get why you’re taking that approach but you risk serious misclassification bias. The replies have stated people are using both “disagree” and “neither agree nor disagree” to indicate they are not hosting a particular kind of service. From your description of your research it sounds like disagree and strongly disagree should indicate that the individual uses company hosted services instead of self hosted services for those domains. The relationship between views on privacy and types of services self hosted is going to be confounded by that.
Be prepared for some respondents to choose the middle option as a proxy for “not applicable,” because that’s what I did.
I chose the middle option for things I’m not hosting, but could see myself hosting in the future.
If this was the expectation, then it should have been a checklist and/or had N/A available. I don’t think your data for this section will be accurate since myself/others replying did not use it this way.
I used “disagree” as “I am using a non-self hosted service for this,” the middle as “N/A” and the agree as “I am hosting a service for this”…
Yeh, I took “don’t agree or disagree” to be the N/A.
It seemed the most neutral.
I don’t really use anything for bookmark sharing/management. So I don’t strongly disagree or strongly agree with self hosting it.
I’m a little concerned about selection bias (because obviously).
I also want to know about people who are not aware of self-hosting. If they’d be interested or even try.
I sort of fit that category. I am aware of self-hosting, even somewhat interested. But I know absolutely nothing about it, and if I’m being honest, too lazy to research it.
Truthfully, I haven’t owned my own PC/Laptop in over a decade. I just use the one I get from work if I need to do something on a computer. I preferred gaming on a PS4/5 so I could just relax on the couch with a controller instead of sitting in a chair at a desk. I recently got a steam deck and love it. I want to poke around desktop mode some more so I can get more familiar with Linux.
That’s a very valid concern, and you’re absolutely right to bring it up.
One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users, which means that in order to get enough self-hosters from the general population for meaningful analysis, we’d need a very large sample.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the funding or resources to conduct such large-scale research through a representative panel or agency. That’s why this study is focusing on communities where self-hosting is already discussed, like this one.
That said, we’re definitely aware of this limitation, and we’re also sharing the survey in broader, more general-interest online communities where we expect non-self-hosters (or people unfamiliar with the concept) to be more present. This will allow us to include comparisons between the two groups in the analysis.
Really appreciate your thoughtful comment — thanks!
One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users
Wow! That’s a lot higher than I would’ve expected. My guess would’ve been about 1%, or maybe even an order of magnitude or so less than that.
My guess is that it also included things like the 12 year old hosting a Minecraft server for their friends. Which, to be clear, is a totally valid self-hosting use case.
Yeah, it surprised me too! If you want to read more about it, check out the paper titled “Towards Privacy and Security in Private Clouds: A Representative Survey on the Prevalence of Private Hosting and Administrator Characteristics” by Gröber et al. (2024).
Thanks for linking that. Reading the paper, it looks like the majority of the “self-host” population they’re capturing is people who have a WordPress site. By my reading, the wording of the paper would disqualify a wordpress.com-hosted site as “self-hosted”. But I’d be very suspicious of their methodology and would expect that quite a few people who use WP-hosted reported as self-hosted because the language is pretty confusing.
Thanks for the source, super interesting read! I would’ve guessed 1-5% as well.
I suspect there’s a tendency of experts in something to think of people who do it narrowly as people doing at least as much as they are.
The people who have a bunch of docker services, or complex multi-machine infrastructure are self-hosted software users, and probably in that 1-2% range. People who heard piholes are useful, so they bought a pi 3 and set it up are self-hosted software users. Somebody using an old desktop they got on Facebook marketplace for running Plex media are self-hosted software users… and so on. So are the people in their houses, some of their friends and family.
Using that inclusive definition, being closer to 10% than 1% makes sense to me.
Good luck on your thesis!
Done. Good luck.
Thanks so much – really appreciate it! :)
i smoked some good weed like half an hour ago, do i need to wait
Uploaded your mind to the cloud
nah, we smoke the cloud like ops
I have answered, and had to put “Other” in employment status because I am self employed. An option for self employment would have been useful in my opinion!
Thank you for your feedback! You’re right, self-employment could be listed more clearly, but choosing “Other” was absolutely fine and your response is fully valid. Thanks again!
Submitted.
I am in finance/accounting/consulting and I run one self hosted small server at home to manage my home machines remotely and use it with combo of proton to do most things.
While I am in the process of de-googleing I haven’t self hosted photo or email yet as proton has been working okay for the time being. One step at a time I guess for me… I am not in IT so it requires time for me to read up on things and set them up (rtfm indeed)…(yes we all know what proton CEO said… )…let’s see how it pans out.and this has been quite a journey for me. I am still having issues with family and friends not wanting to use jitsi (that I am using for calls or contact me on signal). I have basically thrown WhatsApp and anything I don’t care about within beeper under a work profile (android) I.e. in a sandbox / appimage (laptop).
Personally if next cloud allowed self hosting with self email hosting (whatever the technical terminology is) that would have been (chef’s kiss) muah…I would have jumped on it first hand…
Sorry I am not in IT so my jargon usage might be sub par.
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Done
I added my answers. Good luck on your thesis!
Thanks a lot for your input and kind wishes, really appreciate it!
I’m old enough to consider the framing of the question to be weirdly loaded.
It does not feel that long ago where people would be asked to justify entrusting their product’s functions and data to a bunch of strangers who can make unilateral decisions about your service with zero comeback. Now we’re being asked to justify not doing that.
Thank you for your comment. The use of similar statements is a common practice in survey research, as it helps to capture various dimensions of a construct more reliably and provides a clearer understanding of individual perspectives.
Regarding your concern, the purpose of this study is not to ask anyone to justify or defend their choices, whether it’s about using third-party services or self-hosting. Instead, we aim to identify the factors that influence such decisions, from a scientific standpoint, to better understand the motivations behind them. The goal is not to judge whether one choice is better than another, but to gain insights into the different considerations that shape people’s decisions when it comes to managing their data and services. Thank you again for taking the time to complete the survey.
Sure, I’m just bemoaning the fact that you’ve taken cloud hosting to be the default. It’s as much a complaint about the world in general as anything specific to you. Good luck with it all.
Totally understand your concern, and you’re right, the assumption of cloud as a default can be frustrating in many ways.
That said, this framing partly reflects the state of the academic literature: in the past 10–15 years, cloud adoption (especially SaaS) has been extensively studied, to the point where it often feels “default” in research too. In contrast, self-hosting has been far less explored, which is exactly why we’re doing this study—to help fill that gap and highlight its relevance, especially in academic contexts.
Thanks again for your thoughts and for the good wishes! :)
Done. Are you going to be sharing the results here? That would be cool.
Thank you very much – I really appreciate your participation! Yes, the results will be published as part of my PhD dissertation, and also in one of the peer-reviewed journals in the field of Computer Science. Once everything is finalized and publicly available, I’ll definitely share a summary and a link to the publication here as well. Thanks again for your interest and support!
