Your data.
Your infrastructure.
Your rules.
Practical guides for running Proxmox, Docker, and self-hosted services on budget hardware. Built from a real homelab, not a sponsored lab. New to homelabs? Here's how to build a homelab on a budget. Not sure where to begin? Start here for the full reading order.
Setup Guides
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How to Get HTTPS for Every Homelab Service (NPM + Let's Encrypt)
A repeatable workflow for putting trusted HTTPS in front of every service in your homelab using Nginx Proxy Manager and free Let's Encrypt certificates. No self-signed warnings, no per-service certs.
Homelab Email Notifications: Alerts From Uptime Kuma, Proxmox, and Docker
Get one inbox that tells you when a service goes down, a backup fails, or a container updates. Free email alerts from Uptime Kuma, Proxmox, and Docker using a Gmail app password.
Syncthing for Homelab: Sync Files Between All Your Devices
Scale Syncthing past one laptop. Real folder-sharing strategy, versioning, and per-device ignore patterns for a mesh of laptops, phones, and a homelab server.
Latest Articles
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Used Enterprise SSDs for Homelabs: Are eBay Data Center Drives Worth the Risk?
Used data center SSDs on eBay look like an absurd deal. Here's what you actually get, what the endurance numbers really mean, and when a new consumer drive is the smarter buy.
Best Budget Managed Switch for VLANs (Homelab, 2026)
The 2026 shortlist of the best budget managed switches for homelab VLANs: the $25 hero pick, a cheaper rival, and upgrade tiers for PoE and 2.5G networking.
TP-Link TL-SG108E vs Netgear GS308E: Which Budget VLAN Switch Should You Buy?
TL-SG108E or GS308E for homelab VLANs? Real differences in VLAN capacity, price, warranty, and expansion, plus which one wins for IoT isolation.
TrueNAS vs Unraid vs OpenMediaVault: Which NAS OS Should You Actually Run?
A practical comparison of TrueNAS, Unraid, and OpenMediaVault for a budget homelab NAS: cost, drive redundancy, hardware requirements, and which one fits your build.
Best UPS for a Homelab: Battery Backup on a Budget
A UPS is the cheapest insurance your homelab will ever buy. Here's how to size one for a low-power setup, which units are worth the money, and how to make it shut your server down safely.
My Homelab Stack: Everything I Actually Run (and What It Costs)
A full tour of my budget homelab stack: the hardware, every service I run grouped by job, and the real monthly cost breakdown with numbers.