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---
title: I ditched half my subscriptions, all because of one hobby
description: A personal account of how picking up self-hosting as a hobby led to cancelling multiple paid subscriptions. By learning Docker and experimenting with...
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og:description: A personal account of how picking up self-hosting as a hobby led to cancelling multiple paid subscriptions. By learning Docker and experimenting with...
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> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# I ditched half my subscriptions, all because of one hobby

**[XDA Developers](https://daily.dev/sources/xda-developers)** · 3 min read · 79 upvotes · 24 comments

## Summary

A personal account of how picking up self-hosting as a hobby led to cancelling multiple paid subscriptions. By learning Docker and experimenting with self-hosted apps like BentoPDF (replacing Adobe Acrobat) and Karakeep (replacing Pocket), the author discovered that many recurring payments were funding convenience rather than irreplaceable functionality. The key takeaway: self-hosting doesn't mean rejecting all subscriptions, but it forces each one to justify its cost.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.xda-developers.com/ditched-half-my-subscriptions-all-because-of-one-hobby>

## Questions this post answers

### What self-hosted alternative can replace Adobe Acrobat for PDF editing?

BentoPDF can replace Adobe Acrobat for common PDF tasks like merging, splitting, compressing, converting, and editing files. One self-hoster found it handled nearly every PDF task in their daily workflow, making a paid Adobe Acrobat subscription unnecessary.

_Comparing self-hosted PDF tools against Adobe alternatives is easier with real workflow write-ups on daily.dev._

### What self-hosted tool can replace Pocket for saving articles and links?

Karakeep is a self-hosted alternative to Pocket for saving and organizing articles, videos, and links. It provides the core saving and organizing functionality while keeping the library under the user's own control rather than a third-party service.

_Developers weighing self-hosted read-it-later apps against Pocket can find comparisons like this on daily.dev._

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@thecookingsenpai** · 4 upvotes

> Self hosting Is the way to go. I didn't even realize until I got there. My only remaining subs are my VPN and AI . I self host everything including my email and is smooth af . Highly recommend.

**@yildirim** · 4 upvotes

> Careful: DO NOT FORGET TO BACKUP EVERYTHING IN A SAFE PLACE (separate disks etc)

**@deaff** · 4 upvotes

> I'm self-hosting for about 6 years. Of course, I still have some recurring cost (2 VPS, Domains, Claude Pro), but many things are running in my basement.
>
> - Immich
> - Jellyfin
> - Audiobookshelf
> - Paperless
> - Adguard
> - Vaultwarden
> - Navidrome
> - Komga
> - Gitea
> - Seafile
>
>
> Everything runs pretty stable and it feels great to know where your data actually is stored ;)

**@xghozt** · 3 upvotes

> I've been doing this for many years now. My biggest struggle at the moment is backups. After years and years of data hoarding, I now somehow need to backup multiple TB of data via a 40Mbps home connection uplink. If you can get fiber, great, but I'm stuck with 1.2Gbps down and 40mbps up. It takes weeks to do a proper upload and needed a UPS and failover 5g network to ensure it's not interrupted. I've resorted to an archived physical backup drive I have at another building just in case, but this has been my biggest hurdle. Good luck, it's worth it!
>
> Only other tip I could give you is... don't...

**@deepjoshi\_dev** · 0 upvotes

> I will give it a try.

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---

Tags: [#cloud](https://daily.dev/tags/cloud), [#docker](https://daily.dev/tags/docker), [#self-hosting](https://daily.dev/tags/self-hosting)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-ditched-half-my-subscriptions-all-because-of-one-hobby-qigq7yu8u)

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