Hey r/selfhosted 👋 I’m the founder of Refearnapp, an affiliate tracking platform that you can self-host on your own infrastructure. I wanted to share why I went the self-hosted route and why it might matter to you if you’re running any kind of referral or affiliate program.
Why self-hosting affiliate tracking specifically? Most affiliate/referral SaaS tools charge per-click, per-conversion, or a % of revenue. When you’re scaling, that gets expensive fast. With self-hosting, you pay once (or just for your server) and that’s it — no surprise invoices tied to your growth.
What you actually own Your data stays on your server. Conversion events, affiliate emails, payout history — none of it goes to a third-party analytics pipeline you don’t control. No vendor lock-in. If Refearnapp (or any SaaS alternative) shuts down tomorrow, you still have everything running and your data intact. Custom integrations are actually possible. Access the DB directly, hook into your own webhooks, plug into internal tools — things that are impossible or heavily restricted on closed SaaS platforms. GDPR / compliance is simpler. When your users ask “where is my data?”, the answer is literally your own server. Much easier to manage than coordinating with a third-party processor. The tradeoff (being honest) Self-hosting means you’re responsible for uptime, updates, and backups. It’s not for everyone. But if you’re already comfortable running a VPS and a Docker container or two, the setup is straightforward.
Who it’s for If you run an indie product, a SaaS, or an e-commerce store and want to run affiliate/referral programs without handing over your conversion data to yet another third party — this is built for you.
Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, setup, or the reasoning behind going self-hosted. What do you all look for when evaluating self-hosted tools like this?
I think you should make it clearer in this post that you are selling hosting services for this. It feels like this is self promotion but without transparency otherwise.
I — wouldn’t — worry — about — it — too — much — bro. I — have — the — same — problem — .
self vibe coded.
5 em dashes.
I have written with a healthy helping of dashes for a long time (regular ass - unless auto-correct switches it to an em-dash. This AI proliferation of em-dashes (and people’s awareness of it) means I get over-scrutinized 😟
They also forgot to change r/selfhosted from when they posted it to reddit… https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1ter9n9/refearnapp_opensource_selfhosted_affiliate/
As well as: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1sk4oqw/refearnapp_selfhosted_opensource_affiliate/
Here’s their answers to “Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project”:
it is written by ai i give the idea then ai writes that
this post is written by ai. i only give it thought on what idea it should post and it generated everything.
Their post history contains a mixture of comments with grammar like the above as well as many comments with excellent grammar, often containing em dashes. It seems like they only post on Reddit using AI comments to karma farm so they can spam AI generated posts like this to try to get some people to pay for their hosting subscription for their vibe coded app.
“self hosting is important because …”
Uses github.
Old habits die hard. Github’s for discoverability. I self-host gitea. For FOSS projects I’d choose Codeberg though.
Do people actually discover projects by randomly wandering on github though
I mean, it’s all links, a link to github or a link to codeberg won’t change much
They don’t need to. Github has a much stronger SEO. It’s literally a global top 100 website.
Github as billboard / pointer / “trust signal” is just smart discoverability…but not a good “home” these days.
What self-hosted software you use is not hosted on some third party forge?
Forgejo.
Even that is questionable to say the least: while codeberg is the main fogejo contributor, the forgejo project and codeberg are separate entities with separate governance and funding.
But Forgejo code is hosted on a Forgejo instance. Not a third party forge like Gitlab, Bitbucket, etc
That’s called dogfooding, not self-hosting :)
Let me get this straight though: I’m not saying no project self-hosts their code (eg. IIRC both KDE and Gnome do), I’m just saying that the majority of FOSS projects (including those that are dedicated to self hosters) does rely on some sort of third party to host their source code.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a FOSS project just because they rely on a third party (even commercial ones) to publish their source code.
Github is like the Microsoft of 3rd party forges.
Yep but eksb’s comment was about selfhosting, not FOSS or ethics (same can be said for this community, although that’s less relevant than the specific comment of course)
Suspiciously so (͡•_ ͡• )
