> Maintaining a self-hosted solution is an enormous cost, which most people forget about. You need to create, document, maintain and support an entirely different version of your software (single-user, no billing/invoicing, different email sending, different rights system, etc).
I think you're not looking at this from a local-first perspective. From that perspective you can have the same app locally as on the server. There's only one version. Yes, it does require more planning and atypical approaches, but it's 100% doable.
I'm in the planning stage of a local first web-app that will have a server side version, and it's literally going to be the exact same code on both.
I can see some arguments for having _slight_ differences between server and client software but nothing that isn't easy for a solo-dev to maintain. Mostly set it up once and never touch it again type things.
thinking local-first has fundamentally changed some decisions i normally make without thinking for web apps, but I think it will absolutely be worth it for my users in the end.
I think you're not looking at this from a local-first perspective. From that perspective you can have the same app locally as on the server. There's only one version. Yes, it does require more planning and atypical approaches, but it's 100% doable.
I'm in the planning stage of a local first web-app that will have a server side version, and it's literally going to be the exact same code on both.
I can see some arguments for having _slight_ differences between server and client software but nothing that isn't easy for a solo-dev to maintain. Mostly set it up once and never touch it again type things.
thinking local-first has fundamentally changed some decisions i normally make without thinking for web apps, but I think it will absolutely be worth it for my users in the end.