2w ago

My Favorite Self-Hosted Apps Launched in 2025

selfh.st My Favorite Self-Hosted Apps Launched in 2025

A look back at some of my favorite self-hosted software and applications released in 2025

38 comments

Oh fantastic... That's another 5 services to test drive.

Thanks! BentoPDF is fantastic, I never knew something like this existed.
I have a todo list where I keep track of services I might be interested in one day, I read your post a few hours ago and added Bento to my list, thinking I might get around to it in a few days/weeks/months. Then out of nowhere 15 minutes ago I randomly needed to crop and split a PDF and realized I didn't have anything to do it. I fired Bento up and was done in under a minute.
- You might be interested in StirlingPDF too.
  
  Yeah I use StirlingPDF extensively.
  I might give Bento a try but ultimately not much incentive to change.
- You will love omnitools
  EDIT: And vert
  I know that cause I'm using framasoft instances:
  https://omnitools.framatoolbox.org/
  https://vert.framatoolbox.org/
  (From framatoolbox)
  
  Vert is amazing, thanks!
  
  Wow, this is very useful!!
  
  Between omnitools and vert, which one do you recommend? I think the former has more features, but there must be a reason why you recommended vert as well.
  EDIT: On closer inspection, it looks like omnitools has multiple tools (including conversion), and vert focuses on conversion. I focused way too much on the conversion features that the other tools went over my head.
- Is it better than StirlingPDF?

I've been pretty satisfied with my arr stack so far, but how are the alternatives?

Usually I find these lists a bit "meh", but there's actually a bunch of stuff here I want to try.
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Sync-In
Poznote
Postgresus
Loggifly
OpenArchiver
BentoPDF

Thank you for this! I’ve been trying to find a NextCloud replacement for years. I personally can’t stand the database approach to managing files. So glad to see Sync-In can just add a system folder directly without having to import.
- There is also opencloud

Anyone know of any container management systems focused on podman?
- Quadlet
- By management you mean?
  I just have all my podman containers in the same folder. With one root file linking them all together.
  Podman also has built in watchtower functionality so it can patch and maintain itself automatically
  I don't ever think about them
- I use Cockpit which comes with many other awesome features too.
- I don't have a suggestion but commenting so I'll remember to follow. I've just been using the CLI but if there's a nice management system I'm interested.
  Though, I'm curious if a docker one would work... I have docker aliased to podman already

switched from portainer to arcane recently. much easier on the eyes and the ability to save compose projects without deploying them yet is exactly what i was looking for. one thing is weird and i should prolly make an issue for it: no horizontal scroll or word wrap function in the compose editor, so for those compose files with extensive comments like npmplus you'll have to have open in a text editor or webpage to read to the end of lines.
- man, arcane looks amazing, I ended up deciding off it though as their pull requests look like they use copilot for a lot of code for new features. Not that I personally have an issue with this but, I've seen enough issues where copilot or various AI agents add security vulnerabilities by mistake and they aren't caught, so I would rather stray away from those types of projects at least until that issue becomes less common/frequent.
  For something as detrimental as a management console to a program that runs as root on most systems, and would provide access to potentially high secure locations, I would not want such a program having security vulnerabilities.
  
  a program that runs as root
  Does it have to run as root? It's common to run Docker in rootless mode in production environments.
  
  I wouldn't be exposing any management consoles to the internet either way, too much risk with something that has docker socket access.
  
  ugh well that sucks butt. i'll be trying new alternatives tonight i guess lol
  any recommendations?
- I'm just waiting for something like this with native podman support
- Komodo is the best portainer alt I've found, I read through the Arcane info but it doesnt seem as good. Komodos editor also works great.

Those media management apps look great. Sonarr and Radarr have both annoyed me a bit recently, I'll definitely be looking into them.
- Any initial thoughts so far (if you've had the time to look into them)? I really want to find something that can support multi-season downloads. The *arr stacks have rejected the feature in the past and it's been my biggest gripe lately.
  The alternatives seem pretty young still. I wonder if anyone's done a feature comparison between them...
  
  Like one download that has multiple seasons? Sonarr doesn't do that itself, but you can do it with a manual import.
- How so? I've ran them for years with zero issues

Nice curated list! I think I'll check some of them out for my own self hosted solution

I'm gonna pick up a few of these I think.
That NoteDicovery looks pretty slick. Its exactly what I was looking for a few months ago, and I'd absolutely pick it up if I didn't just fall in love with the silverbullet's ability to execute code embedded directly in the markdown; a feature that I expect to use almost never, but atotally smitten with.
As a side note, all these email archiving projects almost do something I want, maybe folks here can help me:
\ I've heard that self-hosting email is not worth the pain, but I also don't want to leave my email history in the hands of these megacorps I don't trust. These archive projects solve that problem, but they're not email clients. I don't want to archive and delete an email just to find out actually I need to reply to it like a month later.
\ What do you recommend for this usecase?

I used compose maker a lot when i started learning docker recently. It's a great way to see how to use tool.

38 comments