Hybrid Host it

Let's say you want to self host apps and api's, but you don't have a fixed IP address or want to accept the risk of opening a port from your network. This is how you can create a secure connection to your home network and share it out to the world.

The Architecture

┌─────────────────────┐
│       INTERNET      │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│   app.example.com   │
│   123.123.123.123   │
│                     │
│   VPS               │
│   (digital ocean $4)│
│   ├─ Caddy (443)    │
│   └─ WireGuard      │
│      10.10.10.1     │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
WireGuard Tunnel (UDP 51820)
Encrypted, ~10ms latency
│
┌──────────┴──────────┐
│   NAS (pier-to-pier)│
│   WireGuard         │
│   10.10.10.2        │
│   └─ App (8080)     │
│                     │
│   (Behind home      │
│    NAT - no public  │
│    IP)              │
└─────────────────────┘

In drafting this post the first time around I came across this other one: https://bastienlc.github.io/posts/2025/07/home-server-proxy/

It is a well written post about how to essentially do the same thing here.

Why this is so cool

This allows you to spin up whatever service you can dream up on your home servers and share it out to the world without worry of someone entering your network. Front it with Authelia or something and you have an auth gated web server available to the world.

I find it to be a fun step between going full cloud or direct connection to self hosted.

What I'll do with this

I'll be spinning up a Coolify instance on my homelab to get Netlify-esque tooling with my home setup that allows me to self-host things. Then the VPS becomes my messenger out to the world!

Cloud is still really cool

I like a hybrid approach for when I don't want to worry about a runaway bill, want to keep the data on my machines, or just want to be able to spin things up without thinking of pricing schemes.

Netlify, Cloudflare, and others do a great job of hosting full web apps very easily and cheaply. There's just this tail of cases where I find it nice to run my own infra.

Plus, it's just really cool to know you can press a physical power switch to shut the whole thing down if ya wanted.