Self-Hosted Software
Understanding the self-hosted (self-managed) software deployment model, and how vendors support self-hosted customers with a distribution platform
What is Self-Hosted Software?
Self-Hosted Software Definition
Self-hosted (also called self-managed) deployment is a model where organizations are responsible for fully hosting, operating, and maintaining software within their own infrastructure, either on-premises or in a private or public cloud environment. This approach gives customers complete control over their environment, including data security, compliance, and access management, which matters most in highly regulated industries. Unlike SaaS or BYOC, self-hosted solutions require organizations to handle software setup, updates, scaling, and ongoing maintenance themselves.
How Does Self-Hosted Software Work?
In a self-hosted deployment, customers typically purchase a license, then download and install the software onto their own servers or cloud environment. They handle all infrastructure-related tasks, including server setup, storage allocation, network configuration, and security. The organization’s IT or DevOps team applies updates and patches, monitors system health, manages backups, and troubleshoots issues. This deployment model demands more technical expertise and generally carries higher ongoing IT costs, but it offers strong customization and control.
Why Choose Self-Hosted Software?
Self-hosted deployment is often chosen by organizations that require complete control over their environment, particularly in industries with stringent data sovereignty, security, and compliance requirements, such as finance, government, and healthcare. This model is also preferred by companies with unique operational needs or specialized infrastructure requirements, as it allows for full customization and integration with existing systems.
While it involves a larger internal resource commitment, self-hosted deployment is ideal for businesses and government agencies with the expertise and resources to manage their own infrastructure and for those needing a high degree of autonomy and data control. This model prioritizes control and flexibility at the expense of convenience and ease of scaling.
For a detailed comparison of the three deployment models, see our guide on choosing between self-hosted, SaaS, and BYOC.
Self-Hosted vs Self-Managed
The two terms are pretty similar and, in most conversations, interchangeable: both mean the customer runs the software on infrastructure they control, and the vendor provides it. Which one you encounter mostly depends on who is talking. “Self-hosted” is the term used in open source and developer communities (think of the self-hosting movement around tools like Nextcloud or Home Assistant), while commercial vendors tend to brand their non-SaaS edition “self-managed”: GitLab Self-Managed is the best-known example.
Where people do draw a distinction, it’s usually this: “self-hosted” emphasizes where the software runs (on the customer’s infrastructure), while “self-managed” emphasizes who operates it (the customer’s team handles updates, backups, and maintenance). In practice the two go together, since whoever hosts the software almost always ends up managing it too. Unless a vendor explicitly defines the terms differently in its offering, you can treat them as the same deployment model.
How Vendors Support Self-Hosted Software with a Distribution Platform
Offering a self-hosted edition doesn’t mean handing customers a tarball and wishing them luck. The vendors that succeed with self-hosted treat it as a product surface of its own, and a software distribution platform like Distr provides the infrastructure for that:
- Artifact distribution. A vendor-controlled container registry serves Docker images, Helm charts, and other artifacts, with per-customer access controls so each customer only sees the versions they are entitled to.
- Guided installation and updates. Optional deployment agents (Docker Compose and Helm) install the software in the customer’s environment and roll out updates when the customer approves them, which reduces version fragmentation.
- Offline license enforcement. Signed license keys and entitlements work without a connection back to the vendor, so seat limits, feature gates, and expiry hold up even in air-gapped environments.
- Health monitoring and diagnostics. With customer consent, agents report deployment status, metrics, and logs, so support teams can troubleshoot without direct access to the customer’s infrastructure.
- Customer self-service portal. Customers download releases, generate registry credentials, and manage their deployments through a white-labeled portal instead of email threads with support.
The result: vendors can offer a self-hosted edition with an operational profile close to SaaS, while customers keep the control that made them choose self-hosted in the first place.
