Hello everyone!

I recently switched my Android phone to a custom ROM, and while setting things up, I wanted push notifications without relying on Google. That’s how I discovered UnifiedPush.

Really liking the concept, I decided to rent a small VPS (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM) and started hosting NTFY. So far, it’s been working great. Over time, I’ve added a few more services like FreshRSS and Audiobookshelf.

All of this is just for personal use, so the resource usage is minimal (the whole setup only uses around 500MB of RAM). I really enjoy how much value you can get out of such a small machine.

That brings me to my question:

What other lightweight, self-hostable tools would you recommend? I’m especially interested in small, resource-efficient services that you’ve personally found useful.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Radicale - I ditched Nextcloud for it as no-one needed to see a calendar, it’s on their phone…

    I also use it to sync a calendar for Home Assistant too

    And it effectively backs up my Contacts too.

  • ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pubEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Small static websites. You can get surprisingly performant and easily managed websites if you don’t actually need the overhead of common frameworks. For instance giving your kid a real domain they can update and show to their friends.

    On the slightly more resource intensive side, OpnSense has been a game changer for me.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’m in the process of switching from ipfire to opnsense myself.

      I hate how bloaty opnsense is at first glance but it has so much more control so once I copy my current config I’ll be leaving ipfire in the dust.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I think you will be back at Ipfire soon. OPNsense is a confusing mess and while IPfire certainly has its issues, at least it is easy to understand and it does what it is supposed to.

        • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          yea I have the machine backed up in case this happens. I have noticed that its a mess UI wise. But ipfire doesn’t seem to be stable. every few months it’ll randomly kill itself which will take everything on the network down until i manually restart the machine and then force tell it a new DNS server. It’s something I’ve never managed to resolve on the machine, and I don’t seem to have that issue with my test network with OPNsense.

      • ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pubEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Nice. Haven’t tried IpFire but gonna give it a look. Been on OpnSense for a couple years now and have been enjoying it.

    • confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      For blogs I found two interesting projects that are super minimal. BashWrite uses only bash and sed commands but it seems to be no longer under development.

      Another bash script that seems to have more development activity is BSSG. This one requires a markdown processor such as cmark or pandoc but it’s still quite minimal.

      I love minimalism and writing scripts so these two projects really interest me.

    • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’m a big fan of static site generators. For the websites I maintain, switching from WordPress to Hugo reduced my workload a lot.

      I set up a workflow using DecapCMS + Hugo + GitHub. Non-technical users can log in via GitHub to edit content on the CMS, and GitHub Actions automatically builds and deploys the site via SFTP.

      GitHub is kinda meh, but it’s low-cost and gets the job done.

  • yardratianSoma@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    glance averages around 20MB of RAM per day on my home server. Others have mentioned syncthing, which is also very light on resources, and super useful.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    SFTP Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging

    2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

    [Thread #182 for this comm, first seen 21st Mar 2026, 16:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    KOreader Sync if you use KOreader. Easily pick up where you leave off on other devices!

    I also run Wiki.js to (inconsistently) document what I’m doing with my apps and server.

    • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Thanks! I own an e-reader, but as the stock software has served me well so far, I haven’t had any reason to switch. Is KOReader worth it?

      • offspec@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        My favorite part of koreader is the reading statistics and historical calendar view

      • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I moved all my books out of Amazon last year and host them for my family with Calibre Web. Jailbroke my Kindle and use KOreader exclusively, so I use Sync so that if I need to read while I’m out, I can just pick up on my phone.

        • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          The chance that I will do anything else but reading when using my phone is big, so the sync maybe not as relevant. That said, using KOReader with a centralized ebook library still sounds really useful. Thanks!

          • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Ha. Heard. I mostly don’t want to carry another device when I travel for work, so will use my phone to read.

  • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’m thinking about finding an alternative to ntfy. The maintainers are increasingly vibe coding it.

  • Paddle0681@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I found https://github.com/TwiN/gatus recently and its been a welcomed alternative to UptimeKuma (I have many hosts I monitor, so having a configuration file makes it far easier).

    I run a Prometheus server at work, for doing ICMP latency checks, thats all I need at home. Gatus is super simple for my needs.

  • rem26_art@fedia.io
    0·
    2 months ago

    If you have a need for Calendar or To-dos, Radicale is a nice CalDAV/CardDAV server that’s pretty tiny. For me its sitting there at idle using 35MB of RAM.

    • tofu_oligarch@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Small Update:

      I set up Radicale as a replacement for EteSync (as it seems development has stalled, and I am paying for the VPS anyway) and so far it works great. Getting a “shared” calendar to work with symlinks was not that intuitive in a Podman setup, but I got it to work. Thanks for the suggestion!

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I used to use Nextcloud and put files in there instead of Google Drive. That’s ok, but turns out, way more than I need. I use Nephele with the Owlfiles app now. It’s less resource intensive. Also, I can manage actual folders on my server. I have a simlink to my Jellyfin media folder and manage it from there.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Possibly underrated: CopyParty. Its an entire fileserver in a little over 1 MB. You can host it on anything that runs python and the client can be anything with a browser. It’s unbelievably simple and efficient. If I knew self hosting was this easy I would have started sooner.

    • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      There’s also an image for Copyparty if you’re already hosting stuff as containers. It’s super handy.