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!

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    Git Popular version control system, primarily for code
    HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
    IP Internet Protocol
    LAMP Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP stack for webhosting
    SFTP Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging
    nginx Popular HTTP server

    [Thread #182 for this comm, first seen 21st Mar 2026, 16:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Possibly underrated: CopyParty. Its an entire fileserver in a little over 1 MB. You can host it on anything that runs python and the client can be anything with a browser. It’s unbelievably simple and efficient. If I knew self hosting was this easy I would have started sooner.

  • ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pubEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      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.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        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.

      • rem26_art@fedia.io
        0·
        3 months ago

        In addition to what others have said, Syncthing will use public relay servers if it can’t make a direct connection between your devices. Everything is encrypted, so it’s not unsafe or anything as far as i know, but if you want to run your own private Syncthing relay server, you can. (Or run your own public one)

      • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I’m not PC but, one benefit of using a central server for syncthing is an always on backup that doesn’t require another client device to be on, it also allows for easier creation of new shares.

        For example, with syncthing you can set the “servers” client device to auto approve/accept any shares that are to trusted devices, then when you get a new device, instead of needing to add that device to every device you share on the syncthing network, you only need to add that device to the server and then you can have your other clients connect to the servers share instead of device to device. It’s easier. You can also configure the shares on the server to use encryption by default too, since you don’t really ever need to actually see the files on the server since it’s basically a install and forget style client.

        As an example of what I mean:

        I have 10 different devices that run syncthing, 9 clients and a “server” client. these clients are not always on at the same time, and as such when I change a file, the files can become desynced and cause issues with conflicts. By having a centralized server, as long as the server is on(it always is) and client itself is online, it’s going to always sync. I don’t need to worry about file conflicts between my clients as the server should always have the newest file.

        Then for example say my phone died. Instead of needing to readd every seperate client that the phone needs to share with to the new device, I only need to add the phone as a trusted source on the “server” client via the webui -> click share to that device on every share the phone needs, and then remap the shares to the proper directories on the mobile device. this is vs having to add every device to the phone, and the phone to every device it needs access to ontop of reconfiguring all the shares. It’s simpler, but fair warning does cause a single point of failure if the server goes offline.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I used to use Nextcloud and put files in there instead of Google Drive. That’s ok, but turns out, way more than I need. I use Nephele with the Owlfiles app now. It’s less resource intensive. Also, I can manage actual folders on my server. I have a simlink to my Jellyfin media folder and manage it from there.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    XMPP server (Prosody) that can also act as a Unified Push distributor.

    • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Nice! I think XMPP is the best approach to messaging, as it is decentralized and can be E2E (and more mature than e.g. Matrix). The problem is that I won’t be able to convince anyone I know to use XMPP (Signal was a huge struggle already).

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        For now you can use XMPP with the Slidge Signal gateway. At some point there will be an issue with Signal due to their centralized servers in the US and then you will be happy to not depend on it so much.

  • BinaryUnit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Low-footprint services are are great I have been using Shaarli for bookmarks for quite a while it never failed me, and is very easy on server resources ~50Mb of RAM

  • VeryVito@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I feel like the world is sleeping on ForgeJo — it’s such a capable and easily hostable alternative to gitlab/github/bitbucket.

    • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s literally the core foundation of my entire self-hosting configuration. I could not live without Forgejo. I can’t imagine being shackled to Github or some other hosted provider anymore for something as important as my git repositories.

      Gitea’s okay too in every practical respect, but Forgejo is the more community-led fork and in my opinion less likely to be corporatized and enshittified far in the future, so I’ve hitched my wagon there and couldn’t be happier. The fork is starting to diverge slowly, so it seems like direct migration is no longer possible. That said, git repositories are git repositories, and they have most of the important history and stuff inside them already, so unless you’re super attached to stuff like issues and whatever you can still migrate, you’ll just lose some stuff.

    • iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Huge shout-out to Forgejo. It’s blazingly fast, even on low resource devices. Throw it on a Raspberry Pi and chuck it in a closet. I betcha it would have better uptime/reliability than GitHub.

    • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      What’s the flow there? Receive link, copy, open MeTube, paste, download watch?

      Tiktok and Instagram links are so frustrating when friends send them.

  • rem26_art@fedia.io
    0·
    3 months ago

    If you have a need for Calendar or To-dos, Radicale is a nice CalDAV/CardDAV server that’s pretty tiny. For me its sitting there at idle using 35MB of RAM.

    • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Small Update:

      I set up Radicale as a replacement for EteSync (as it seems development has stalled, and I am paying for the VPS anyway) and so far it works great. Getting a “shared” calendar to work with symlinks was not that intuitive in a Podman setup, but I got it to work. Thanks for the suggestion!

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Radicale - I ditched Nextcloud for it as no-one needed to see a calendar, it’s on their phone…

    I also use it to sync a calendar for Home Assistant too

    And it effectively backs up my Contacts too.