You have to account for electricity (it runs 24/7) and the eventual failure of hard drives. 3. The "Maintenance Tax" This is the dealbreaker for most.
You value long-term savings, data sovereignty, and you actually enjoy "tinkering." It’s a hobby that pays dividends in privacy. buy own server
If a drive fails at 3 AM on a Saturday, your services are down until you fix it. You are the IT department. You handle the security patches, the backups, and the hardware upgrades. The Verdict You have to account for electricity (it runs
Your data isn't sitting on a Google or Amazon drive where it can be scanned or indexed. You value long-term savings, data sovereignty, and you
If a drive fails at AWS, you never know; they just swap it.
You need 99.9% uptime, don't want to hear a fan spinning in your closet, and prefer a predictable monthly bill over a massive upfront investment.
At first glance, buying seems expensive. A solid home server might cost $500–$1,000 upfront. However, compare that to a mid-tier Cloud VPS or a 2TB Dropbox/Google One plan over three years.