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Exactly. You want reliable CAPTCHAs? CDN service? Malware detection? Customer support software? Website uptime monitoring? Accounting software? Analytics? Email

Exactly. You want reliable CAPTCHAs? CDN service? Malware detection? Customer support software? Website uptime monitoring? Accounting software? Analytics? Email delivery? Good luck building and running all that yourself.

im3w1l 8y ago
All of those can be bought and then self hosted except for CDN.
- mortenjorck 8y ago
  That definitely solves the building part.
- jtms 8y ago
  hosted where? On a VPS, in a data center, or in your closet? All of these depend on third party services and good luck keeping them up and running as well as someone who makes just that ONE little thing their entire reason for existing.
  - y4mi 8y ago
    I don't agree with the parent either (I'd rather use a SaaS if it makes sense) its also not as easy as you make it sound. For starters, most smallish companies I know of use housing for their servers. So, they actually do own the hard metal servers and have full access to them. Both over SSH and on the console for debugging purposes. The housing provider generally replaces HDDs in case of disk failures. naturally, you're still dependent on electricity and internet, but even that can be mitigated by spreading your servers across several locations. All of that is obviously possible with AWS, GCP or other VPS hosts, but doing it yourself is not that much harder if you've got an experienced ops person that wants to bother with all of that. but i repeat... Its often not worth the time investment to get that system properly set up. Just renting VMs or going straight into dockerized microservices is an increasingly better alternative
  - jarfil 8y ago
    > On a VPS, in a data center, or in your closet? Yes, any of those sounds like a good enough plan B. You don't need it to be perfect, just good enough to avoid getting stranded in a pinch. Then you can start shopping around for someone who does that one little thing much better than you do. That way it no longer is a show stopper and rather just an optimization problem.
- laumars 8y ago
  I don't know why you're getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. Perhaps most of the people in this thread haven't managed servers for more than a decade - because it used to be (and still is in some organisations) the norm to self-host half the stuff that was listed. * Malware detection? Isn't that pretty must how most malware detection works? Sure they use the cloud to pull periodic updates but the software itself is self hosted * Customer support software? I've lost count of the number of solutions available to self host. Both free and commercial. * Website uptime monitoring? While there is a strong argument for hosting that in the cloud, there are umpteen solutions for website monitoring. * Accounting software? I didn't even realise running accounting software as a service was now a thing! * Email delivery? Fair enough, self hosting email can be a massive headache. Less so if you run Microsoft Exchange (one of the few things Windows actually makes easier than it's Linux / UNIX counterparts). You can even go for a hybrid approach and self host the mail server but have a mail proxy between your server and the outside world - so you benefit from spam detection as a service while still hosting your own mail. I'm not going to argue that one is better than the other when it comes to SaaS vs self hosting. But people in here seem to have very short memories when arguing that self-hosting isn't at all viable. In fact I have personally supported all of the above in self hosted versions in the last couple of years.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    I don't think anyone is disputing that it's possible, but rather how cost-effective and time-efficient it is [1]. I also have the experience of managing many of these services, and I therefore know just how much more productive you can be when you don't need to do it yourself. Of course there are trade-offs; business is nothing if not a game of tradeoffs. We're just talking about what is optimal. [1] Not to mention how much more stable and secure; Self-hosting can involve huge security and reliability risks.
    - laumars 8y ago
      > We're just talking about what is optimal. I don't believe what is optimal can be generalised like that. "Optimal" is going to be specific to the business in question. Which is why I'm a firm believer of leaving all the options on the table. > Self-hosting can involve huge security and reliability risks. In fairness so can the cloud. I personally don't see difference as 'risk' but more 'responsibility'. Some of the places I've worked have been PCI DSS and Gambling Commission audited so we had that responsibility already. Self hosting a few other resources didn't really add much extra in terms of our security responsibilities. But the case would be very different of lots of other different types of businesses.
- hackerpacker 8y ago
  but real-time promiscuity where you spread your users info everywhere and have no backup plan is much more FUN. (/s)

im3w1l 8y ago

All of those can be bought and then self hosted except for CDN.

mortenjorck 8y ago
That definitely solves the building part.
jtms 8y ago
hosted where? On a VPS, in a data center, or in your closet? All of these depend on third party services and good luck keeping them up and running as well as someone who makes just that ONE little thing their entire reason for existing.
- y4mi 8y ago
  I don't agree with the parent either (I'd rather use a SaaS if it makes sense) its also not as easy as you make it sound. For starters, most smallish companies I know of use housing for their servers. So, they actually do own the hard metal servers and have full access to them. Both over SSH and on the console for debugging purposes. The housing provider generally replaces HDDs in case of disk failures. naturally, you're still dependent on electricity and internet, but even that can be mitigated by spreading your servers across several locations. All of that is obviously possible with AWS, GCP or other VPS hosts, but doing it yourself is not that much harder if you've got an experienced ops person that wants to bother with all of that. but i repeat... Its often not worth the time investment to get that system properly set up. Just renting VMs or going straight into dockerized microservices is an increasingly better alternative
- jarfil 8y ago
  > On a VPS, in a data center, or in your closet? Yes, any of those sounds like a good enough plan B. You don't need it to be perfect, just good enough to avoid getting stranded in a pinch. Then you can start shopping around for someone who does that one little thing much better than you do. That way it no longer is a show stopper and rather just an optimization problem.
laumars 8y ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. Perhaps most of the people in this thread haven't managed servers for more than a decade - because it used to be (and still is in some organisations) the norm to self-host half the stuff that was listed. * Malware detection? Isn't that pretty must how most malware detection works? Sure they use the cloud to pull periodic updates but the software itself is self hosted * Customer support software? I've lost count of the number of solutions available to self host. Both free and commercial. * Website uptime monitoring? While there is a strong argument for hosting that in the cloud, there are umpteen solutions for website monitoring. * Accounting software? I didn't even realise running accounting software as a service was now a thing! * Email delivery? Fair enough, self hosting email can be a massive headache. Less so if you run Microsoft Exchange (one of the few things Windows actually makes easier than it's Linux / UNIX counterparts). You can even go for a hybrid approach and self host the mail server but have a mail proxy between your server and the outside world - so you benefit from spam detection as a service while still hosting your own mail. I'm not going to argue that one is better than the other when it comes to SaaS vs self hosting. But people in here seem to have very short memories when arguing that self-hosting isn't at all viable. In fact I have personally supported all of the above in self hosted versions in the last couple of years.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  I don't think anyone is disputing that it's possible, but rather how cost-effective and time-efficient it is [1]. I also have the experience of managing many of these services, and I therefore know just how much more productive you can be when you don't need to do it yourself. Of course there are trade-offs; business is nothing if not a game of tradeoffs. We're just talking about what is optimal. [1] Not to mention how much more stable and secure; Self-hosting can involve huge security and reliability risks.
  - laumars 8y ago
    > We're just talking about what is optimal. I don't believe what is optimal can be generalised like that. "Optimal" is going to be specific to the business in question. Which is why I'm a firm believer of leaving all the options on the table. > Self-hosting can involve huge security and reliability risks. In fairness so can the cloud. I personally don't see difference as 'risk' but more 'responsibility'. Some of the places I've worked have been PCI DSS and Gambling Commission audited so we had that responsibility already. Self hosting a few other resources didn't really add much extra in terms of our security responsibilities. But the case would be very different of lots of other different types of businesses.
hackerpacker 8y ago
but real-time promiscuity where you spread your users info everywhere and have no backup plan is much more FUN. (/s)