Hi everyone,
I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.
To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.
🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls
This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.
If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.
Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project (luka.hrgarek@um.si)!
Cheers!
Hmm. The first section about cloud service providers is a bit weird to me. There are providers which “keep my best interests in mind” as part of their business model, backblaze would be one. Their whole idea is to provide a good backup services. Encrypting my data before transit also doesn’t make me worried that it will be accessed by them or any of their employees because they will only get some garbled mess.
Compare that to google, another cloud service provider. Their business model is to make money by selling me ads (foremost), they do that by gathering as much data as possible. Here all my answers would be negative.
This puts me in an awkward spot where I nearly every time answer with “Neither agree nor disagree”, because there is more to it and not because I don’t have an opinion.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback!
You’ve raised an important point: cloud service providers are not all the same, and their business models can significantly influence how much trust users place in them. We fully agree that there’s a big difference between providers like Backblaze, whose value proposition is built on privacy and reliability, and companies like Google, where monetization often relies on extensive data collection.
The purpose of this section in the survey is to explore general perceptions and motivations behind, not to evaluate individual providers. However, we understand that this generalization can be limiting — especially for respondents who distinguish clearly between different types of services and trust models. Your situation, where you answered “Neither agree nor disagree” not out of indecision but due to the complexity of the issue, is very insightful.
Thanks again for taking the time to share this, it’s greatly appreciated!
Felt that too. Its throwing all providers in one bucket which makes it very hard to judge
Page 2 seems to have a lot of redundant question.
I intend to continue using self-hosting services in the future if possible.
I will use self-hosting services regularly in the future if possible.
I will frequently use self-hosting services in the future if possibleThey are different enough in intention though.
I intend - I plan to try, but I might not.
I will - I am definitely going to, but maybe not very often or for limited uses
I will frequently - I am definitely going to, and it will be a common/important part of my work/life-flow
Questions in surveys like this are sometimes repeated with slight variations to get more accurate results.
Done. Nobody else wants to know why I have 3 RasPi’s running stuff around the house, so I get to tell you in the survey, lol.
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Done, good luck!
Thank you so much, really appreciate it!
- It’s educational for those who have a lust for learning.
- It’s fun.
- It’s far more private than using commercial cloud services.
Done. Many questions which are the same or almost similar.
Thank you for participating in the survey and for providing your feedback.
We are aware that some of the statements may appear similar or closely related. This is an intentional aspect of the survey design, aimed at capturing different dimensions of the same underlying construct or thematic area. In scientific research, it is a well-established and widely used practice to include multiple, conceptually related items when measuring a specific concept.
Good luck with your research!
Many of my self hosted solutions are just DIY cludges. I was talking to a friend of a friend on Saturday about media streaming and he told me all about his Jellyfin setup and then asked about mine and I was just like “I just store MP4s on an SSHFS drive and play them in VLC on my TV (which runs Linux Mint).” When the survey asked about the various types of software I was like “No… I don’t use anything like that… wait… yes I do! I just don’t use a prebuilt solution!”
Done, though some of the questions were redundant or weirdly phrased.
This is actually a technique to capture an honest answer from a respondent. Ask the same question a few different ways here and there, then take the average of the answers. (It could have been executed better in this survey, though.)
I have a feeling for that to be effective they should be spread-out and not appear one after another though.
You’re absolutely right, rephrasing similar questions is a common technique in survey design to reduce bias and improve reliability.
Some questions may feel a bit redundant or oddly phrased because we based the survey on validated constructs from prior academic research, especially well-established models like the Technology Acceptance Model. Using these standardized scales helps ensure the results are scientifically sound and comparable with previous studies - though I totally get that it can feel repetitive from a participant’s point of view.
That said, I really appreciate the feedback from both of you.
Ad a German, I was confused by the second education question and what I should fill out.
(mapping Grundschule / Hauptschule / Realschule / Gymnasium / Studium)
Thank you for your feedback!
We understand that the question about education levels may have been confusing, especially when trying to map the German school system to the categories provided.
The answer options in our survey are based on ISCED 2011 – the International Standard Classification of Education, developed by UNESCO. This is a globally recognized framework used to ensure that education levels can be compared across countries, despite differences in national education systems.
To help clarify, here is how the German terms you mentioned generally correspond to ISCED categories:
- Grundschule → Primary Education
- Hauptschule / Realschule → Lower Secondary Education
- Gymnasium (until Abitur) → Upper Secondary Education
- Studium (university studies) → depending on the degree (Bachelor’s degree or equivalent tertiary education level / Master’s degree or equivalent tertiary education level Doctoral degree or equivalent tertiary education level)
Thank you, that is helpful.
I’ll never understand social media. Maybe it’s me (might as well be as neurodivergent, but then again might say something about tolerance and inclusion… anyhow) but I’d love to understand the downvotes.
The difference in education systems is not a choice of any of the conversations attendees and the differences in education system are fact.
Maybe a downvote for Germany? For not knowing by heart? Or maybe because I stated the issue. Of course, research helps but in details sometimes creates even more confusion so it’s best to ask.
Communication as a way to be helpful. As I want to be to this research because I think it’s a good statement as research to be done.
(Last but not least - I don’t emotionally care about downvotes. I love understanding though.)
Done but I felt lots of questions to be very similar. Maybe there is a form platform that can show only a subset of control questions for every survey.
Thank you for completing the survey and for your thoughtful feedback. The similarity between some questions is intentional and follows common scientific practice when measuring complex or abstract concepts. Using multiple, slightly varied items that target the same construct increases the reliability and validity of the data by capturing subtle nuances and reducing the influence of random response variation. While your suggestion to show only a subset of such items through adaptive platforms is valid and worth exploring, fixed item sets are generally preferred in research settings to ensure consistent and robust measurement. We appreciate your input and will consider it in future survey design improvements.
To be honest, if 3-4 questions in a row had same-ish wording, I just replied the same thing 3-4 times.
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Good Luck Luka!
I feel like I’m a minority in this group in that I really don’t like self hosting but I do it anyways because it gives me the things I want from a content/privacy/control/ownership perspective.
Thanks so much – really appreciate it! :)
PhDs are hard, don’t get discouraged if you get told to rewrite tons of things. My Dad had to rewrite many parts to his dissertation, the arbitrary nature of the rewrites was the hardest part to deal with for him. Hopefully you have better advisors!
Using self-hosting services enables me to accomplish tasks more quickly.
As opposed to what? Using a cloud SaaS alternative, or not having that service at all?
My intuition says “whatever you would do if you didn’t selfhost”
I added my answers. Good luck on your thesis!
Thanks a lot for your input and kind wishes, really appreciate it!
I’m a little concerned about selection bias (because obviously).
I also want to know about people who are not aware of self-hosting. If they’d be interested or even try.
That’s a very valid concern, and you’re absolutely right to bring it up.
One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users, which means that in order to get enough self-hosters from the general population for meaningful analysis, we’d need a very large sample.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the funding or resources to conduct such large-scale research through a representative panel or agency. That’s why this study is focusing on communities where self-hosting is already discussed, like this one.
That said, we’re definitely aware of this limitation, and we’re also sharing the survey in broader, more general-interest online communities where we expect non-self-hosters (or people unfamiliar with the concept) to be more present. This will allow us to include comparisons between the two groups in the analysis.
Really appreciate your thoughtful comment — thanks!
One existing study that surveyed the general population found that about 8.4% of respondents were self-hosting users
Wow! That’s a lot higher than I would’ve expected. My guess would’ve been about 1%, or maybe even an order of magnitude or so less than that.
Yeah, it surprised me too! If you want to read more about it, check out the paper titled “Towards Privacy and Security in Private Clouds: A Representative Survey on the Prevalence of Private Hosting and Administrator Characteristics” by Gröber et al. (2024).
Thanks for linking that. Reading the paper, it looks like the majority of the “self-host” population they’re capturing is people who have a WordPress site. By my reading, the wording of the paper would disqualify a wordpress.com-hosted site as “self-hosted”. But I’d be very suspicious of their methodology and would expect that quite a few people who use WP-hosted reported as self-hosted because the language is pretty confusing.
Thanks for the source, super interesting read! I would’ve guessed 1-5% as well.
I suspect there’s a tendency of experts in something to think of people who do it narrowly as people doing at least as much as they are.
The people who have a bunch of docker services, or complex multi-machine infrastructure are self-hosted software users, and probably in that 1-2% range. People who heard piholes are useful, so they bought a pi 3 and set it up are self-hosted software users. Somebody using an old desktop they got on Facebook marketplace for running Plex media are self-hosted software users… and so on. So are the people in their houses, some of their friends and family.
Using that inclusive definition, being closer to 10% than 1% makes sense to me.
My guess is that it also included things like the 12 year old hosting a Minecraft server for their friends. Which, to be clear, is a totally valid self-hosting use case.
I sort of fit that category. I am aware of self-hosting, even somewhat interested. But I know absolutely nothing about it, and if I’m being honest, too lazy to research it.
Truthfully, I haven’t owned my own PC/Laptop in over a decade. I just use the one I get from work if I need to do something on a computer. I preferred gaming on a PS4/5 so I could just relax on the couch with a controller instead of sitting in a chair at a desk. I recently got a steam deck and love it. I want to poke around desktop mode some more so I can get more familiar with Linux.
Did my part! Good luck!
Thanks a lot, really appreciate it! :)
