4 ms·

People setting up homelab often talk about money saved but never account for the time they have to spend as well not just in setting it up and maintainence. If

People setting up homelab often talk about money saved but never account for the time they have to spend as well not just in setting it up and maintainence. If you value your time, the cost of a google pro subscription is not much. I still run a homelab because I like it and yes its good to be able to run several services for "free" but the commitment is never free. This is also true for businesses. I used to think why do companies don't use open source and save so much on infrastructure costs etc but in reality those costs don't really matter to them and self-hosting costs in terms of time and resources do add up + no gurantee as provided by enterprise level services etc.

Banditoz 1mo ago
Eh, once it's set up the maintenance cost is minimal. Cron'd backups and such and you won't have to worry.
- altmanaltman 1mo ago
  Yes I would consider my system optimal in terms of backup process etc. But I still tinker with it, try out new things, maintain the machines itself, it is a hobby. And it does consume time for me at least. But either way, I am sure a google pro subscription is still cheaper for me than the time value of setting up and maintainence, in the sense we are talking about saving money in real terms
tripleee 1mo ago
This is exactly the reason why companies aren't just going to vibe-code their own software. It's more expensive to maintain than it is just to pay for it outright
- semi-extrinsic 1mo ago
  Depends heavily on the software cost and how far from core competency it is. If the company already has a developer team and the software is an expensive domain-specific CRUD app for internal use without significant compliance or risk factors - sure, go DIY. If the company does not employ any devs, or if the core logic of the software is a business secret of the vendor, or it is customer facing, or there are significant compliance / risk factors - you are better off paying for it. Unless the cost is astronomical, or the company is motivated also by anger at rent-seeking MBA f*ckers at the vendor.
swed420 1mo ago
What you call a commitment, many call a hobby / learning / refreshening opportunity.
- altmanaltman 1mo ago
  yes but there is still an opportunity cost. As I said I still do it because I like it but I also have a life outside just computers. Any time i spend on my homelab is also time I take away from other things. Also there is learning but a lot of the time is spent on doing menial system admin tasks or helping solve "user problems" (i.e. figure out why my partner's friend cannot access jellyfin anymore). So it does become a chore over time and there is always a cost. You can justify it by saying you are getting value out of it but in my experience, this is true for every activity. Everyone has limited time and spending it importantly is important to me.
  - swed420 1mo ago
    > yes but there is still an opportunity cost I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs > a lot of the time is spent on doing menial system admin tasks This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. Other benefits not mentioned include not signing your data or life away to whatever Google's lawyers or marketers have decided is best for them, contributing to FLOSS even if only as an end user, not being a victim of rug-pulls...the list goes on. Obviously this isn't for everybody, because there's no denying it takes time. The point is that for many, this is a very easy tradeoff to make when factoring in all of the other benefits.
    - buran77 1mo ago
      > I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs This is mostly wording. It is a commitment, it has an opportunity cost, there are tradeoffs. > This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. So many opportunities but the day is still 24 hours long. You still have to choose your opportunities wisely, and give up something else in the process. And if you look at the big picture those who choose to take this opportunity are not so many compared to those who just pay with data so they don't have to pay with time and effort. Everyone pays money in the end.
bs7280 1mo ago
The way I see it, I am committing more time and hassle to setup my homelab now to save time, money, and hassle later when the SaaS alternate's inevitably do something hostile to me as the user. Even before AI coding I did not trust big tech companies to make updates that have my best interests in mind. Many of these examples are weird feature or ux changes - like how spotify treats liked songs as a playlist (requiring more taps to like a song). Not the end of the world. But on the more extreme side, my gaming PC's windows installation has died via bad windows update twice now. I don't use it for anything important anymore. It's insane that my claude code driven homelab stack has allowed me to have better uptime than github. Now in the AI coding era, its obvious to me that alot of the tools I am forced to use on a day to day basis are frequently shipped with slop, causing more bugs and all around jankier UX's. With my claude max subscription, im suddenly able to make tools perfectly tailored to what I want, and I can rest assured I wont wake up and find the equivalent of a bad IOS update.
- altmanaltman 1mo ago
  yes makes sense but don't you think that risk will also extend to OSS? I get there's more freedom and people can always fork but I have experienced several open source projects go to garbage as well and forced me to switch to another service. And yes Google had gotten progressively every year that I have been a paying customer as well so I am not against your point either. All I am saying is sometimes cloud makes sense financially as well even though open source allows you to do it for free technically. Enshiftication is the word of our age for everything imo unfortunately
  - drdexebtjl 1mo ago
    OSS lets you take your time. For example, paperless-ngx was already an absolute ball of mud, and now there’s a new major version that’s somehow even worse. I’m just not upgrading. It’s behind a VPN, I control what files it can ingest, so it’s okay if it’s old. I’m looking at a few alternatives and I’ll switch when they are mature and when I have the time, but there’s essentially no deadline.
  - bs7280 1mo ago
ishtanbul 1mo ago
I’d be shocked if anyone running a homelab was really saving much if any money. From personal experience, it has snowballed into a never ending science project of upgrading and tinkering which i enjoy but it probably costing me multiples of cloud subscriptions. I just find it fun and like to learn, and love to diy.
- spl757 1mo ago
  I run all my own stuff local-first, but I am also a systems and networking engineer and understand all of the concepts so I can build it properly. It takes time, and the willingness to do so. If you don't already have the knowledge to set things like this up, and are really doing it to save money as a consumer, then Google Photos as a product is more of a fit and the user will definitely have a better experience. For someone like me, it's easy and quick and I have a very robust incremental backup system with air-gapped copies. So it does save me money, because it only takes my time and knowledge. There is no absolute answer, because it's subjective depending on the needs of the user.
QuiEgo 1mo ago
The value of the homelab for me is things I can’t pay money to get any other way. I would never recommend it for just replacing cloud storage, ROI is not good. There’s nothing as nice as Plex for consuming media IMHO, and home assistant/homebridge glue a pile of cheap IoT stuff into a single, cohesive, useable setup. I am a reluctant admin. I resent spending time on it. It feels like work, which after 10 hours of doing similar things for much better pay grinds on you. Luckily it doesn’t take much time to keep it going after the initial setup. Thread and Matter give me hope one day the IoT stuff might be okay. I have no hope I will ever be able to get the single media portal any other way.
Dylan16807 1mo ago
> If you value your time, the cost of a google pro subscription is not much. And I happily used a Google pro subscription for a while. Even when they doubled the price. Then they started actually limiting it to 5TB and it wasn't worth it. I guarantee you I am saving boatloads compared to the $100/month tier I'd need for all my data. That pays off my entire hardware budget in under a year and the time I spent is worth a fraction of that.

Banditoz 1mo ago

Eh, once it's set up the maintenance cost is minimal. Cron'd backups and such and you won't have to worry.

altmanaltman 1mo ago
Yes I would consider my system optimal in terms of backup process etc. But I still tinker with it, try out new things, maintain the machines itself, it is a hobby. And it does consume time for me at least. But either way, I am sure a google pro subscription is still cheaper for me than the time value of setting up and maintainence, in the sense we are talking about saving money in real terms

tripleee 1mo ago

This is exactly the reason why companies aren't just going to vibe-code their own software. It's more expensive to maintain than it is just to pay for it outright

semi-extrinsic 1mo ago
Depends heavily on the software cost and how far from core competency it is. If the company already has a developer team and the software is an expensive domain-specific CRUD app for internal use without significant compliance or risk factors - sure, go DIY. If the company does not employ any devs, or if the core logic of the software is a business secret of the vendor, or it is customer facing, or there are significant compliance / risk factors - you are better off paying for it. Unless the cost is astronomical, or the company is motivated also by anger at rent-seeking MBA f*ckers at the vendor.

swed420 1mo ago

What you call a commitment, many call a hobby / learning / refreshening opportunity.

altmanaltman 1mo ago
yes but there is still an opportunity cost. As I said I still do it because I like it but I also have a life outside just computers. Any time i spend on my homelab is also time I take away from other things. Also there is learning but a lot of the time is spent on doing menial system admin tasks or helping solve "user problems" (i.e. figure out why my partner's friend cannot access jellyfin anymore). So it does become a chore over time and there is always a cost. You can justify it by saying you are getting value out of it but in my experience, this is true for every activity. Everyone has limited time and spending it importantly is important to me.
- swed420 1mo ago
  > yes but there is still an opportunity cost I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs > a lot of the time is spent on doing menial system admin tasks This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. Other benefits not mentioned include not signing your data or life away to whatever Google's lawyers or marketers have decided is best for them, contributing to FLOSS even if only as an end user, not being a victim of rug-pulls...the list goes on. Obviously this isn't for everybody, because there's no denying it takes time. The point is that for many, this is a very easy tradeoff to make when factoring in all of the other benefits.
  - buran77 1mo ago
    > I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs This is mostly wording. It is a commitment, it has an opportunity cost, there are tradeoffs. > This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. So many opportunities but the day is still 24 hours long. You still have to choose your opportunities wisely, and give up something else in the process. And if you look at the big picture those who choose to take this opportunity are not so many compared to those who just pay with data so they don't have to pay with time and effort. Everyone pays money in the end.

bs7280 1mo ago

The way I see it, I am committing more time and hassle to setup my homelab now to save time, money, and hassle later when the SaaS alternate's inevitably do something hostile to me as the user. Even before AI coding I did not trust big tech companies to make updates that have my best interests in mind. Many of these examples are weird feature or ux changes - like how spotify treats liked songs as a playlist (requiring more taps to like a song). Not the end of the world. But on the more extreme side, my gaming PC's windows installation has died via bad windows update twice now. I don't use it for anything important anymore. It's insane that my claude code driven homelab stack has allowed me to have better uptime than github. Now in the AI coding era, its obvious to me that alot of the tools I am forced to use on a day to day basis are frequently shipped with slop, causing more bugs and all around jankier UX's. With my claude max subscription, im suddenly able to make tools perfectly tailored to what I want, and I can rest assured I wont wake up and find the equivalent of a bad IOS update.

altmanaltman 1mo ago
yes makes sense but don't you think that risk will also extend to OSS? I get there's more freedom and people can always fork but I have experienced several open source projects go to garbage as well and forced me to switch to another service. And yes Google had gotten progressively every year that I have been a paying customer as well so I am not against your point either. All I am saying is sometimes cloud makes sense financially as well even though open source allows you to do it for free technically. Enshiftication is the word of our age for everything imo unfortunately
- drdexebtjl 1mo ago
  OSS lets you take your time. For example, paperless-ngx was already an absolute ball of mud, and now there’s a new major version that’s somehow even worse. I’m just not upgrading. It’s behind a VPN, I control what files it can ingest, so it’s okay if it’s old. I’m looking at a few alternatives and I’ll switch when they are mature and when I have the time, but there’s essentially no deadline.
- bs7280 1mo ago

ishtanbul 1mo ago

I’d be shocked if anyone running a homelab was really saving much if any money. From personal experience, it has snowballed into a never ending science project of upgrading and tinkering which i enjoy but it probably costing me multiples of cloud subscriptions. I just find it fun and like to learn, and love to diy.

spl757 1mo ago
I run all my own stuff local-first, but I am also a systems and networking engineer and understand all of the concepts so I can build it properly. It takes time, and the willingness to do so. If you don't already have the knowledge to set things like this up, and are really doing it to save money as a consumer, then Google Photos as a product is more of a fit and the user will definitely have a better experience. For someone like me, it's easy and quick and I have a very robust incremental backup system with air-gapped copies. So it does save me money, because it only takes my time and knowledge. There is no absolute answer, because it's subjective depending on the needs of the user.

QuiEgo 1mo ago

The value of the homelab for me is things I can’t pay money to get any other way. I would never recommend it for just replacing cloud storage, ROI is not good. There’s nothing as nice as Plex for consuming media IMHO, and home assistant/homebridge glue a pile of cheap IoT stuff into a single, cohesive, useable setup. I am a reluctant admin. I resent spending time on it. It feels like work, which after 10 hours of doing similar things for much better pay grinds on you. Luckily it doesn’t take much time to keep it going after the initial setup. Thread and Matter give me hope one day the IoT stuff might be okay. I have no hope I will ever be able to get the single media portal any other way.

Dylan16807 1mo ago

> If you value your time, the cost of a google pro subscription is not much. And I happily used a Google pro subscription for a while. Even when they doubled the price. Then they started actually limiting it to 5TB and it wasn't worth it. I guarantee you I am saving boatloads compared to the $100/month tier I'd need for all my data. That pays off my entire hardware budget in under a year and the time I spent is worth a fraction of that.