I know it's a rude question, but it's been on my mind… I'm wondering roughly what I should be expecting to outlay when I finish my set-up? So I'm assuming it includes things like domain names, hosting for backups, email providers, VPN, etc. What's a good budget to set?
Impossible to say without providing more details. But somewhere between 10€ and 200€ a month depending on your setup and how you calculate in hardware costs.
Well, I am paying less, but if you realistically calculate the costs of hardware over its lifetime, this is certainly not unrealistic for many homelabs.
Realistically thinking, my domain name, email, VPN and IPTV are the only things I'm gonna be paying for in the next few months. If that came to £200 a month, I'd die 😭
Power, Domain Name (if using a standard paid one instead of the cheaper route), VPN are the 3 that I pay for that I feel are the bare minimum.
I pay for a domain that's $12, but you could easily get the $1 ones for the same purposes. I pay for a static and service VPN with Windscribe, which comes out to be like $35+$89 respectively. So that's already $136 a year excluding the cost of power. I could cut that cost easily, but I use them for more than just my selfhosting so I feel like it's a fair price for what I get out of it.