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👋 Welcome to ElfHosted!

  • We run popular self-hosted apps for you, securely and reliably.
  • Attach your own storage or just use ours.
  • Only pay for the apps you need, swap them out when you want to, billed from $0.05/day

See the apps 🎁 Get started with FREE $10 credit

Quick Start Guides

The back-story

I love self-hosting1, and have been publishing guides on building self-hosting platforms and running apps since 2016. Over time, I've updated my own platform from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes (several iterations).

Somewhere along the way, building automated / resilient / scalable systems in Kubernetes became my DayJob™, and I spent 2 years consulting/co-investing in a seedbox provider.

When this provider shut down, I took the opportunity to take my self-hosting to the next level. I leveraged what I'd built / learned over those past 2 years to build ElfHosted - a multi-tenant, resilient, automated and scalable app hosting platform, running on "budget" bare-metal cloud hardware. I wanted to be able to rapidly deploy new self-hosted apps in a templatized way, and I wanted to invite other geeks to join in / observe the process.

- David (@funkypenguin)

But.. but..

ElfHosted vs Selfhosting

Question:

"Why wouldn't I just run the app myself?"

Answer:

Totally valid. Here are some guides I wrote for doing just that on Docker Swarm or Kubernetes.

ElfHosted is for users (like me, post-kids!) who don't necessarily have the time / inclination to run (and maintain!) certain apps locally, want it to "Just Work™".

ElfHosted vs Seedbox

The following highly-detailed, meticulously researched2, and slightly-tongue-in-cheek table highlights the primary differences between ElfHosted and a seedbox. Provided those differences start with an "s":

Feature ElfHosted Seedbox Notes
🔒 Security ✅ 🤷‍♂️ Your apps are protected by single sign-on (SSO). BYO VPN for torrenting apps.
🚦Simplicity ✅ 🧑‍🔬 Preconfigured integrations between supported apps. Apps appropriately resourced for reasonable use.
🚜 Stability ✅ 🔥 Kubernetes, HA, and GitOps ensures it all "Just Works"
🎁 Selection ✅ 🦖 Apps are added / updated frequently. Pay for only what you use.
💾 Storage ✅ 🤷‍♂️ Bring your cloud storage, or buy from us!
👯 Sexy ✅ 👎 Built by geeks. In public. Join us!

Question:

"Why not just get a seedbox?"

Answer:

Yes, you could, and depending on what you want, it may be more customizable, cheaper, bigger, more performant, or more suitable for classic seeding / torrent racing / ratio-chasing.

That's not necessarily our jam though, consider this alternative 👇

How to build a classic seedbox on ElfHosted for 50c/day

You could buy the following apps:

For $0.45/day ($13.50/month), you have the basic Arrs, a download client, and a streaming client. For storage, you buy a 1TB Hetzner Storagebox ($4/month), and mount it to your apps ($0.05/day).

Now you have a basic seedbox, plus 1TB storage, for $0.50/day, and importantly, if ElfHosted fails, you own your storage, and you can migrate it / mount it to another provider 💪


  1. Defined as controlling and managing the apps I use, regardless of where they run 

  2. Sarcasm, people! DYOR! 😛