this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Selfhosted

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Does university email give you any free server? (lemdro.id)
submitted 1 day ago by claim_arguably@lemdro.id to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm wondering if university email allow you to get free server that you could try self hosting on it on any service

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[–] eli@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Cloud options:

Self-Host locally options:

Honestly you can probably find a N100 or N150 miniPC online for cheap, like $200 USD or less. Install Proxmox(or just install Ubuntu or whatever), install Docker+DockHand, and then install Tailscale and from your laptop/computer with Tailscale on it. You'll be able to remotely access it, spin up whatever servers you want, and I doubt your campus IT will even see anything due to the tailnet mesh.

If you're not living on campus, then even better, just self host your own stuff.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

In the old days, university IT put essentially no access controls on their networks, so students' dorm computers were completely exposed to the internet. Any service you started was immediately, globally accessible. Some big sites, including slashdot and facebook, got their start in some kid's dorm room. I feel like access controls really got going in the early 00's - first for residential, then for broader campus.

Check with your IT people - they may have policy or conditions under which they will expose ports on your personal computer to the internet. Otherwise, your best bet is probably free-tier AWS or Oracle.

Not free, but there are some 'KVM VPS' providers out there that will rent you a small, internet exposed computer pretty cheap. They can be a good platform for experimenting with self-hosting services, without exposing your personal equipment or home network. eg: 1CPU/1GB RAM/24GB SSD $12/year https://my.racknerd.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=903

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

In the old days, university IT put essentially no access controls on their networks, so students' dorm computers were completely exposed to the internet

Dorm ethernet works this way for me right now. It's how I host some stuff. I only get 100 mb/s per port though. I've bonded two ports to get 200 total.

[–] milk@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 day ago

You can get some free credit for a few services with a university email. See https://education.github.com/pack

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 12 hours ago

it isn't ideal but cloudflared is an option if you can't directly expose ports

[–] WhyAUsername_1@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You could get a free server from Oracle (OCI),/even without a Uni email.

[–] claim_arguably@lemdro.id 5 points 1 day ago (6 children)

If so, why nobody talks about? Could I setup rss server there?

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Because it's run by One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

[–] WhyAUsername_1@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Because Oracle has the tendency to delete VMs without prior notice.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 20 hours ago

This happened to our Minecraft server LOL

[–] axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Only if you do something they don't like, or generate way too much traffic.

I've been using it responsibly just fine for 5 years.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 day ago

It’s a bit of a bitch, and they can kill it at the drop of a hat.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

On their ARM platform you get something like 8 cores and 24GB of RAM. Honestly, that'll run a hell of a lot more than an RSS server.

I have one that's running three different minecraft servers simultaneously.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

On a more serious note.

As you aren't paying for the compute your stuff will be turned off when a paying customer wants capacity.
All the cloud vendors do this Azure calls it Spot pricing

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Check your university's policies. Unless you can justify it as related to your education, you probably won't be allowed to do it if they notice it.

Edit: I thought you meant running your self-hosted services on the university's servers.

[–] krow@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

my uni did offer student access to aws and azure, however these were limited such as only having like 100 bucks in credit, youd usually only also get this if you were enrolled into the respective units such as a cloud computing class