Self-hosting apps on a home server facing the internet

April 06, 2025

old.reddit.com (2025). "m4nz comments on Should I completely abandon the idea of hosting apps on my home server for anybody on the internet to use?". Retrieved April 06, 2025.

Someone asks:

Hi guys, I'm a CS student looking to host some apps I made so that anybody can demo them over the internet. I’m quite new to all this, but I’ve lurked this subreddit enough to know that using a VPS is the go-to option for this. The problem is that my apps are fairly computationally intensive, and the cost of running them on a VPS adds up quickly given the resources they need.

Given that my ISP offers static IPs for my network and that I have a dormant PC with the compute required to host all my Dockerised services, I was wondering if I could just self-host my apps from my home network instead. VPNs are out of the question because of the need for the services to be easily accessible to anybody over the internet.

I understand there are dozens of concerns around security and performance when exposing apps to the internet from a home network, so I just wanted to clarify if it was possible at all to do it in a way that doesn't completely screw my server or home network's security over. If it's not possible, are there any other (cheaper) alternatives for my use case?

Thank you guys!

To which another person responded:

Yes you can do it in a very safe and isolated way! This will be a great learning as well, especially since you are a CS student -- I think you should do it!

Does your home network firewall/router support network isolation such as VLAN? If so, create a dedicated VLAN only for external facing services (some people like to call it a DMZ).

Now, what OS do you have on your dormant PC? If it can be re-installed, I recommend you install Proxmox, create a new VM, assign it to the DMZ VLAN, and then run your applications in there (I recommend running your apps in Docker inside the VM)

Throw in Cloudflare tunnel in that VM and you are done!

Worst case scenario - Someone hacks your applications and gains access to your isolated VM -- Since it is isolated, they cannot do anything else -- This is no different than running your apps in a VM in the Cloud

In case you do not have a Firewall / router that supports isolation -- Let me know what router you have, we can brainstorm some stuff