Hey r/selfhosted 👋 I’m the founder of Refearnapp, an affiliate tracking platform that you can self-host on your own infrastructure. I wanted to share why I went the self-hosted route and why it might matter to you if you’re running any kind of referral or affiliate program.
Why self-hosting affiliate tracking specifically? Most affiliate/referral SaaS tools charge per-click, per-conversion, or a % of revenue. When you’re scaling, that gets expensive fast. With self-hosting, you pay once (or just for your server) and that’s it — no surprise invoices tied to your growth.
What you actually own Your data stays on your server. Conversion events, affiliate emails, payout history — none of it goes to a third-party analytics pipeline you don’t control. No vendor lock-in. If Refearnapp (or any SaaS alternative) shuts down tomorrow, you still have everything running and your data intact. Custom integrations are actually possible. Access the DB directly, hook into your own webhooks, plug into internal tools — things that are impossible or heavily restricted on closed SaaS platforms. GDPR / compliance is simpler. When your users ask “where is my data?”, the answer is literally your own server. Much easier to manage than coordinating with a third-party processor. The tradeoff (being honest) Self-hosting means you’re responsible for uptime, updates, and backups. It’s not for everyone. But if you’re already comfortable running a VPS and a Docker container or two, the setup is straightforward.
Who it’s for If you run an indie product, a SaaS, or an e-commerce store and want to run affiliate/referral programs without handing over your conversion data to yet another third party — this is built for you.
Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, setup, or the reasoning behind going self-hosted. What do you all look for when evaluating self-hosted tools like this?
“self hosting is important because …”
Uses github.
Old habits die hard. Github’s for discoverability. I self-host gitea. For FOSS projects I’d choose Codeberg though.
Do people actually discover projects by randomly wandering on github though
I mean, it’s all links, a link to github or a link to codeberg won’t change much
They don’t need to. Github has a much stronger SEO. It’s literally a global top 100 website.
Github as billboard / pointer / “trust signal” is just smart discoverability…but not a good “home” these days.
What self-hosted software you use is not hosted on some third party forge?
Forgejo.
Even that is questionable to say the least: while codeberg is the main fogejo contributor, the forgejo project and codeberg are separate entities with separate governance and funding.
But Forgejo code is hosted on a Forgejo instance. Not a third party forge like Gitlab, Bitbucket, etc
That’s called dogfooding, not self-hosting :)
Let me get this straight though: I’m not saying no project self-hosts their code (eg. IIRC both KDE and Gnome do), I’m just saying that the majority of FOSS projects (including those that are dedicated to self hosters) does rely on some sort of third party to host their source code.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a FOSS project just because they rely on a third party (even commercial ones) to publish their source code.
Github is like the Microsoft of 3rd party forges.
Yep but eksb’s comment was about selfhosting, not FOSS or ethics (same can be said for this community, although that’s less relevant than the specific comment of course)
Suspiciously so (͡•_ ͡• )