I think it's the easy start that's the problem. Docker and Docker Compose is pretty good for self-hosting, except you have to understand enough to realize that

I think it's the easy start that's the problem. Docker and Docker Compose is pretty good for self-hosting, except you have to understand enough to realize that it's not as simple as it sounds. You can easily lose data you didn't know you had if you're not paying attention. "I'll just delete the container and restart" sounds like a great solution, but you just blew away your photos or whatever because you didn't know it created some volume for you. I have a btrfs volume as the root of all the apps. Each application is in an individual subvolume so they can be snapshotted at upgrade time. The docker-compose.yml file points each app's volume to a relative directory inside that subvolume. This way I can move them around individually, and all their data is right there. I can back them up pretty easily too. Works for me and my use case, but you could never expect it to be turn key, and you couldn't hand it off to somebody non-technical.