Let’s keep this simple. We built SelfHostHero to escape Big Tech’s surveillance capitalism. It would be entirely hypocritical of us to track you while you read about privacy-first server setups. Therefore, our privacy policy is straightforward: We do not want your data, we do not track you across the web, and we definitely do not sell your information.
1. Analytics (The Open-Source Way)
We do not use Google Analytics. We have actively removed invasive tracking scripts from our infrastructure. Instead, we use Plausible Analytics (a privacy-focused, cookieless, open-source analytics platform). It only gives us aggregate data—like which articles are popular or what countries our readers are from—so we know what tutorials to write next. It does not track your IP address, it does not fingerprint your browser, and it does not follow you around the internet.
2. Cookies
SelfHostHero uses the absolute minimum number of cookies required for the site to function. We do not use third-party tracking cookies, retargeting pixels, or social media tracking scripts.
The only exception involves Affiliate Links. If you click an outbound affiliate link (like an Amazon hardware recommendation), that external platform will place a cookie on your browser to attribute the sale to us. We have no control over their cookies, but you can clear them at any time from your browser settings. You can read more about this in our Affiliate Disclosure.
3. Comments and Contact
If you leave a comment on our site, the data shown in the comments form, as well as your IP address and browser user agent string, are collected purely to help with automated spam detection. If you email us, we only keep that email to reply to your technical questions. We will never add you to a marketing newsletter without your explicit, double-opt-in consent.
4. Embedded Content from Other Websites
Articles on this site may occasionally include embedded content (like our own audio recaps or technical YouTube videos). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These external websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content. Because of this, we keep third-party embeds to an absolute minimum.
5. Data Sharing and Retention
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal identification information to anyone. Ever.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically. For anything else, we only hold server log data for as long as technically necessary to keep the infrastructure secure and running.
6. Your Rights (GDPR Compliance)
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or server security purposes.
Questions? You are a homelabber. You know how the internet works. If you spot anything on our infrastructure that looks like a tracker, call us out on it so we can nuke it from orbit.
