For founders who'd rather host than pay
You're paying $200-$800/month for tools you could self-host for $5-$15. We show you exactly how, with honest setup guides, real code, and zero hustle.
Every tool below is open source, self-hostable, and replaces a SaaS you're currently paying for. Each guide tells you the setup time, the difficulty, and the risks — before you click install. No buried caveats. No "enterprise pricing."
Four tools we'd install first on a fresh VPS. Each one replaces a subscription you're probably paying for right now.
Privacy-first web analytics you host yourself. No cookies, no consent banners, no 47-dashboard clutter.
Live chat, email, WhatsApp, and Instagram DMs in one inbox. The Intercom alternative that doesn't charge per conversation.
A publishing platform that respects your words and your wallet. Newsletter, blog, and membership site in one. No Substack tax.
Build automations visually, host them yourself. The Zapier replacement where you don't pay per task.
No course. No gated content. No upsell sequence. Here's the entire thing.
Browse the directory. Each card shows setup time, difficulty, and what it replaces. Filter by category.
Every tool page has a step-by-step setup, the actual code you'll run, and the risks upfront. Copy, paste, done.
Hit a wall? Post in the community. We and other founders who've done the same setups answer questions. Free, forever.
We watched too many founders burn $300/month on a stack of LTDs and SaaS subscriptions — tools that do one thing, charge per seat, and lock your data behind an API.
The open source alternatives are better now. Not "good for free." Genuinely better. But the setup guides assume you're a developer.
So we wrote the guides we wish we'd had. Plain English. Real code. Honest about what's easy and what's a pain. And we built a community around it, because doing this alone is miserable.
The tools are free. The guides are free. The community is free too. We built it because self-hosting alone is hard, and asking questions in a Discord full of developers is intimidating.
Ask setup questions in plain English. Get answers from people who've done the exact install you're doing. No RTFM, no condescension.
Every week we add a new tool guide and a one-line announcement. No newsletter sequence. No upsell. Unsubscribe in one click.