Sorry if I’m mistaken on this, but I’m still new to self-hosting.
Currently I use SyncThing and I love it. My files are accessible to me wherever I am in the world, and it costs me nothing.
I’d like to move more of my life to self-hosted servers. I’m looking at leaving Spotify for Funkwhale. But if I’m reading the materials correctly, I’ll need to set up a domain and pay some upfront costs to make my library accessible outside my home.
Why is that? Is there a way to make my costs 0, the way they are with SyncThing?
The cool thing about SyncThing is that it’s peer to peer, meaning you don’t need a central server for your files to sync. They can go between your laptop and phone, for example.
Something like Funkwhale does need a server, and to talk to that server outside your local network, you need a domain name.
As some others have said, you could use a VPN like Tailscale to connect to your local network remotely. Alternatively, you could simply not deal with all the faff and only use your services locally, which is what I do with Nextcloud and Immich. Syncs when I get home but doesn’t when I’m not, and I can always use Tailscale to remotely access my server if there are any issues.