About this site

I'm Henry Xiang. I keep self-hosted services alive for small teams — the unglamorous half of the job: backups that actually restore, monitoring that pages someone, and containers that come back after a reboot.

Why this site exists

Most self-hosting content online is written by someone who installed a tool once, took a screenshot of the login page, and moved on. That is enough to rank, and it is useless when your own install breaks at 3am and the tutorial's command returns a permission error the author never saw.

So this site is written from the other direction: I break things first, then write down what happened. Every guide names the hardware, the operating system and the version. Where a command failed, the error message is in the post along with the fix. Where a tool is worse than its reputation, the verdict says so even when there is an affiliate link on the page.

How the testing works

Server-side guides run on a Lenovo M720q with Proxmox 8 underneath and a Debian 13 VM where the actual services live. Storage is a ZFS mirror over USB — not ideal, and the setup page says why it is still in place.

Comparisons get at least a month of side-by-side runtime with the same data on both sides. Anything shorter than that is labelled as a first look rather than a comparison. Reviews state the runtime in the first paragraph, because "reviewed after six months" and "reviewed after one weekend" should not read the same.

Prices and version numbers go stale. When you spot one, the contact page is the fastest route; corrections are usually applied the same day and the post date at the top changes with them.

Who I am, briefly

A backend developer by trade, working mostly with .NET and Postgres, which means I read logs for a living and have strong opinions about backup verification. Self-hosting started as a way to stop paying for five subscriptions that each did a tenth of what I needed. It turned into the thing I spend weekends on.

HomeLabSpot is published by Quanzhou Luojiang Chengheng Information Technology Co., Ltd.. The site is independent: no vendor has paid for a placement, and no post has been reviewed by a company before publishing.

How the site makes money

Two ways, both disclosed on the pages where they appear. Display ads, once the site is approved for them, and affiliate links — if you buy something through a link on this site, the vendor pays a commission and the price you pay does not change. There is a longer explanation on the disclaimer page.

What that does not buy: a verdict. If a tool I have an affiliate link for is the wrong choice for your setup, the post says so, and there are reviews on this site of tools I stopped using entirely.

What this site will not do

• Publish AI-written guides without running the commands first.
• Recommend hardware I have not owned.
• Give medical, legal or investment advice — that is a different job and I am not qualified.
• Use a stock photo of a server rack instead of a screenshot of the actual thing.

Get in touch

Email suhenggui@gmail.com, or use the contact form. I read everything. Corrections jump the queue.