Building a 24-Service Homelab on a $400 NAS

The $300/Month Wake-Up Call

Last year I sat down and added up what I was paying for cloud services. Notion for notes. Otter.ai for transcription. Todoist for tasks. Bitwarden cloud for passwords. Google Photos for storage. A handful of automation tools. RSS readers. Monitoring dashboards.

The total came to roughly $300 a month. For a single user. For tools that held my data on someone else's servers, behind someone else's terms of service, subject to someone else's pricing decisions.

I decided to build the alternative.

The Hardware Decision

I didn't start with a rack server or a custom PC build. I bought a TerraMaster F2-424, a compact 2-bay NAS with an Intel N95 processor and 16GB of RAM. Total cost: around $400 with drives.

This isn't a monster machine. It's a small box that sits on a shelf and draws about 15 watts idle. But with TrueNAS Scale and Docker, it runs 24 services simultaneously and has for months without a hiccup.

The Stack: 24 Services, One Box

Everything runs as Docker containers managed through Docker Compose. Here's what's running:

Document & Knowledge Management

• Paperless-ngx: OCR-powered document management. Every receipt, letter, and manual gets scanned, tagged, and made searchable.
• BookStack: Self-hosted wiki for structured documentation. Runbooks, procedures, reference material.
• Linkwarden: Bookmark manager with full-page archiving. Never lose a useful link again.
• FreshRSS: RSS reader. Curated feeds instead of algorithmic noise.

Automation & Orchestration

• n8n: Visual workflow automation. 80+ workflows handling everything from document processing to morning briefings.
• ntfy: Push notifications. Every important event across the stack sends a notification.

AI & Vector Search

• Qdrant: Vector database for semantic search. Embeddings generated on my Windows PC, stored and queried on the NAS.
• AnythingLLM: RAG system. Upload documents, ask questions, get cited answers.

Media & Photos

• Plex: Media server for movies and TV.
• Immich: Self-hosted Google Photos replacement with face detection and smart albums.

Security & Infrastructure

• Vaultwarden: Bitwarden-compatible password manager.
• Uptime Kuma: Service monitoring with alerting.
• Syncthing: File sync between devices (Obsidian vault, shared folders).
• Actual Budget: Privacy-first budgeting tool.

Plus a handful of supporting services: Cloudflare Tunnels for secure external access, AdGuard Home for DNS-level ad blocking, a homelab dashboard, and more.

What I Learned

RAM Is the Real Bottleneck

With 16GB total, memory management matters. Immich alone can consume 3GB during photo processing. I learned to stagger heavy operations: run backups at night, limit concurrent transcription jobs, and stop AnythingLLM when I'm not actively using it. A simple free -h command became part of my daily routine.

Docker Compose Is the Best Documentation

Every service is defined in a Docker Compose file. That file IS the documentation. It captures every port mapping, volume mount, environment variable, and dependency. When something breaks, I read the compose file, not a wiki article. When I want to rebuild, I run one command.

Automation Compounds

The first n8n workflow I built saved me 5 minutes a day. The tenth saved me an hour. The thirtieth replaced an entire category of manual work. Automation isn't linear. Each workflow you build makes the next one easier because you've already solved the shared problems (LLM calls, notification routing, error handling).

Privacy Is a Feature, Not a Sacrifice

Self-hosting isn't about paranoia. It's about ownership. My documents aren't training someone else's AI model. My passwords aren't in a breach notification. My photos aren't being scraped for ad targeting. And when a cloud service shuts down or changes pricing, I don't lose anything.

The Cost Comparison

Should You Do This?

If you're a developer or IT professional, yes, without hesitation. The learning alone is worth it. You'll understand Docker, networking, Linux administration, API design, and system architecture at a level that no tutorial can teach.

If you're not technical, it's still possible. Tools like TrueNAS, CasaOS, and Umbrel make it increasingly approachable. Start with one service (Paperless-ngx or Vaultwarden are great entry points) and grow from there.

The homelab isn't just a cost savings exercise. It's a statement: your data, your infrastructure, your rules.