20 home server apps reviewed: which ones are actually worth keeping
Someone with long experience in ranked 20 apps they personally ran, splitting them into keepers and abandoned ones. Keepers: Nextcloud (replaces Google Drive and Photos), ( password manager, rock solid), Jellyfin (, no needed), Pi-hole (blocks ads across the entire home network), Uptime Kuma (clean monitoring dashboard), Immich (Google Photos replacement, still in active development but already reliable), Paperless-ngx (document scanning and organisation, more useful than expected), Mealie (recipe manager, genuinely used). Abandoned: Gitea (no compelling reason to leave GitHub unless privacy is a concern), Matrix/Element (nobody in their circle switched), BookStack (overkill for personal use).
The clear pattern: apps that replace paid are worth the setup effort. Apps that duplicate already-free services are not — you take on maintenance costs while saving nothing.
Key points
- Apps replacing paid (, media streaming) consistently justify the setup effort
- Nextcloud, , Jellyfin, and Immich are the most proven long-term keepers
- Pi-hole blocks ads on every device in your home network and is relatively easy to install
- free services like GitHub offers little benefit and adds maintenance overhead
- Uptime Kuma gives a clean at-a-glance view of whether your server and services are running