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Hello, selfhosted.ma — what we're building and why

Why this publication exists, who it's for, and what ships next.

by Yassine El Haddad ·

This is the v0.1 launch note. The site you're reading is the editorial infrastructure for what comes next: practical, opinionated guides for running your own email, files, websites, and AI on open-source software, anchored in Morocco but applicable wherever you ship from.

The manifesto on the home page is the short version. This is the longer one — who selfhosted.ma is for, what we'll publish, and what we won't.

Why this site exists

The default for a Moroccan developer, indie hacker, or small-business owner in 2026 is renting a stack from Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Mailgun, Notion, Vercel, and OpenAI. Each one is fine, individually. Stacked, they become the operating system of the business, billed monthly in dollars or euros, indexed up most years, and exportable only on the vendor's terms.

The argument for self-hosting isn't ideological. It's pragmatic.

  • The vendor's export format can change at a tier upgrade, and you can't refuse.
  • A pricing change at renewal can triple your line item.
  • An account suspension can land without explanation and without recourse.
  • The data — your data — sits in a jurisdiction you didn't pick.

Open-source software lets you read the code, run a fork, and keep operating when the vendor pivots, gets acquired, or shuts the service down. In Morocco specifically, it also keeps the implementation skill local: your integrator is down the street, not in another time zone.

The home page leans into the loss-aversion frame ("Own your infrastructure. Or rent it forever."). The substance behind it is simpler: closed software ties your data and your workflow to a vendor you cannot audit. Open source is the only category that doesn't.

Who this is for

Five readers, one publication:

  • Developers at Moroccan SMEs and agencies who are tired of paying for another SaaS seat. You want the Postfix-vs-Stalwart decision made for you, with the failure modes spelled out, so you can ship the migration in a weekend.
  • Indie hackers anywhere who can read the Hetzner / OVH pricing in EUR and the SaaS bill in USD and prefer the first column. You want opinionated picks, not a buffet of forty Nextcloud alternatives.
  • Small-business owners (TPE/PME) staring at the CNDP compliance window closing. You don't need a HOWTO. You need a decision tree: should you self-host this category, and what happens if your IT contractor leaves?
  • Marketing specialists and growth leads running into per-email pricing at Mailgun or per-seat pricing at HubSpot. You want to know whether Listmonk + SES, Plausible, and Umami can replace the stack without breaking deliverability or attribution.
  • Association IT volunteers at Moroccan NGOs and co-ops, running things for 20 staff on a fixed budget. You want the lowest-maintenance bundle and a handover doc when you rotate out.

If you recognise yourself in any of those, you're in the right place.

What we'll publish

Eight tracks. Each becomes a series, not a single post. Nothing is written yet; v0.1 is the table of contents.

  • Email — Postfix + Dovecot end-to-end with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. When to choose Stalwart's single-binary path or Mailcow's bundled suite instead. When to give up and pay for Zoho or Fastmail.
  • Files — Nextcloud, Seafile, and Syncthing. What's actually pleasant to run in production for a 5-person team versus a 50-person team.
  • Media — Jellyfin, Immich, and photo backup pipelines that survive a drive dying at the wrong moment.
  • AI — Llama 3, Gemma 4, and DeepSeek-R1 under Ollama for a single developer; vLLM when you actually have users. Faster-Whisper on a CPU for transcription. Document chat over your own corpus without leaking to OpenAI.
  • Marketing — Listmonk + SES (or Postfix) for newsletter, Plausible or Umami for analytics, what survives a real product launch and what doesn't.
  • Security — hardening checklists, Wazuh for detection, restic for backups, key custody patterns, and when to pay for managed and when not to.
  • Compliance — Morocco-specific notes on the CNDP framework, data residency, association obligations, and what European customers will ask you about under GDPR.
  • Hardware — VPS shortlists with Hetzner, OVH, Ionos, and Moroccan providers compared on the axes that matter; refurbished server picks; what to avoid.

The order isn't set. The first real guide ships next, and it will name the stack it covers explicitly so you know up front whether it applies to you.

What's happening around us

The Moroccan tech ecosystem is moving fast. GITEX Africa 2026 in Marrakech made digital sovereignty its main theme. The Digital Minister is on record calling tech "a new sovereignty model." There's a $142M startup push and the "Morocco 300" initiative. None of this is the reason selfhosted.ma exists, but it's the wave the site is rowing with. Self-hosting your stack in 2026 is not a fringe position; it's increasingly the default direction for builders who care where their data sits.

How to follow and contribute

The site is bilingual at launch. English and French. No machine translation — the FR copy is written for Moroccan FR tech readers, not back-translated. French translation review, technical editing, and guide drafts are all welcome. We publish with a byline.

If you have shipped one of the planned tracks in production and your notes are worth turning into a guide, we want to publish them.

More soon.