Yesterday, on June 12th, many of us watched as a significant portion of the internet ground to a halt. Firebase, Supabase, Discord, Spotify—a who's who of services that rely on Google Cloud—all went down, taking countless applications with them. It was a stark reminder of the fragility that comes with building on massive, centralized platforms.
During the chaos, our SelfDB instances didn't even flinch. We experienced zero downtime. Not because we're magic, but because of a simple, powerful principle: true isolation through self-hosting.
For those who haven't seen it, SelfDB is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to platforms like Firebase and Supabase. We package everything you need to build an application backend into a single, containerized platform that you run on your own infrastructure.
The "Why": Radical Decoupling from Big Data
The core reason SelfDB deployments were unaffected is that they are, by design, decoupled from any single major cloud provider's fate. When you run SelfDB, you're not just a tenant on a massive, shared infrastructure. You are the owner of the entire stack.
You can deploy it on any hardware or VPS provider—Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, or even a bare-metal server in your own office. If your chosen provider has an outage, you can migrate. You have that control. Yesterday, the single point of failure was Google Cloud's networking. For SelfDB users, that was just news, not a crisis.
What is SelfDB? A Supabase Alternative You Control
We aimed to provide the same powerful, all-in-one developer experience as the big players, but in a package you can own and manage yourself. It's all containerized with Docker for easy deployment.
Here's what's in the box:
PostgreSQL Database: The rock-solid foundation for your data.
Authentication: Secure JWT-based auth with anonymous access capabilities.
Object Storage: An integrated S3-compatible service for your files.
Real-time Updates: Live data synchronization via WebSockets.
Cloud Functions: Serverless functions using the modern Deno 2.0 runtime.
Getting Started is Trivial
We believe self-hosting shouldn't be a nightmare. If you have Docker and Git, you can be up and running in minutes.
Take Back Control of Your Stack
Yesterday's outage was a painful lesson in the risks of centralization. While the convenience of BaaS (Backend-as-a-Service) platforms is undeniable, it comes at the cost of control and resilience. Your application's uptime is tied to a fate you cannot influence.
Self-hosting with a platform like SelfDB puts that control back in your hands. It's not about avoiding the cloud; it's about using it intelligently on your own terms.
jazzypants•7mo ago
Cool project! Good work!
I'm definitely going to play around with it, but is there any chance I could get you to compare/contrast with a similar project like PocketBase?
selfdb_io•7mo ago
Try out our live demo to judge for yourself:
link: dashboard.selfdb.io --> anon-key found in the settings pages.
user: admin@example.com
password: adminpassword
selfdb_io•7mo ago
During the chaos, our SelfDB instances didn't even flinch. We experienced zero downtime. Not because we're magic, but because of a simple, powerful principle: true isolation through self-hosting.
For those who haven't seen it, SelfDB is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to platforms like Firebase and Supabase. We package everything you need to build an application backend into a single, containerized platform that you run on your own infrastructure.
The "Why": Radical Decoupling from Big Data The core reason SelfDB deployments were unaffected is that they are, by design, decoupled from any single major cloud provider's fate. When you run SelfDB, you're not just a tenant on a massive, shared infrastructure. You are the owner of the entire stack.
You can deploy it on any hardware or VPS provider—Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, or even a bare-metal server in your own office. If your chosen provider has an outage, you can migrate. You have that control. Yesterday, the single point of failure was Google Cloud's networking. For SelfDB users, that was just news, not a crisis.
What is SelfDB? A Supabase Alternative You Control We aimed to provide the same powerful, all-in-one developer experience as the big players, but in a package you can own and manage yourself. It's all containerized with Docker for easy deployment.
Here's what's in the box:
PostgreSQL Database: The rock-solid foundation for your data. Authentication: Secure JWT-based auth with anonymous access capabilities. Object Storage: An integrated S3-compatible service for your files. Real-time Updates: Live data synchronization via WebSockets. Cloud Functions: Serverless functions using the modern Deno 2.0 runtime. Getting Started is Trivial We believe self-hosting shouldn't be a nightmare. If you have Docker and Git, you can be up and running in minutes.
Take Back Control of Your Stack Yesterday's outage was a painful lesson in the risks of centralization. While the convenience of BaaS (Backend-as-a-Service) platforms is undeniable, it comes at the cost of control and resilience. Your application's uptime is tied to a fate you cannot influence.
Self-hosting with a platform like SelfDB puts that control back in your hands. It's not about avoiding the cloud; it's about using it intelligently on your own terms.
jazzypants•7mo ago
I'm definitely going to play around with it, but is there any chance I could get you to compare/contrast with a similar project like PocketBase?
selfdb_io•7mo ago
link: dashboard.selfdb.io --> anon-key found in the settings pages. user: admin@example.com password: adminpassword
also git clone and run our sample apps: swift: https://github.com/Selfdb-io/selfdb-swift-app expo: https://github.com/Selfdb-io/selfdb-expo-app react vite: https://github.com/Selfdb-io/selfdb-react-vite