Self-hosting is a lifestyle and I have no regrets

At some point I stopped paying for services and started running them myself. Immich instead of Google Photos. Docker makes this stupidly easy and addictive.

The real appeal is understanding what's actually running. You stop being a passive consumer.

Yes things break. Yes you'll spend a Saturday debugging a volume mount. But when it works and your photos are on your own server, it feels genuinely good.