Perhaps the best thing about having a VPS is the ability to experiment with hosting pretty much any application out there. And by using Docker as the foundation, it gets so much easier to try something, have it fail, and then try again.
We feature many of them in our self-hosted alternatives guide, but personally, I'm excited about a select few applications that I'll be able to use to get more productive and reduce my reliance on other SaaS apps that keep pestering me to upgrade to a premium membership that offers features I don't want or need. Plus, having control of my data is infinitely appealing.
1. Monica — a "CRM" for your friends and family
Monica is an open source application to help people manage the relationships between their friends and family.
Monica allows people to keep track of everything that's important about their friends and family. Like the activities done with them. When you last called someone. What you talked about. It will help you remember the name and the age of the kids. It can also remind you to call someone you haven't talked to in a while.
The Monica repository comes with a docker-compose file, so that's pretty much all you need to get started. The installation instructions are a little more complex than simply running a docker command, so it's best to just point you in the direction of how to install Monica.
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2. GitLab — a self-hosted GitHub competitor
I have a number of small Git repositories that I use to manage some personal applications and web development projects, and some are things I don't want to expose to the public, which is the default in GitHub (unless you're willing to pay up). For example, I just migrated away from one of the popular password managers to
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