# Why is self-hosting still this painful in 2026?

**Author:** Elian Van Cutsem
**Published:** 2026-04-19
**Tags:** web development, Tanstack, Self-hosting, Coral
**Description:** I tried to set up a clean self-hosted stack this weekend. It was a nightmare. Why is this still so painful in 2026?

---
# Why is self-hosting still this painful in 2026?

This weekend, I tried to set up a clean self-hosted stack.

Nothing crazy. Just a couple of services I wanted to run locally.

What I expected:

* spin up a few containers
* connect them
* done

What actually happened:

* Docker configs everywhere
* random ports colliding
* containers breaking for no reason

At some point I just stopped and thought:

**why is this still so painful?**

We have amazing tools.

We have Docker.
We have open source everything.

And yet, setting up a simple stack still feels like:

* reading docs for hours
* debugging weird issues
* copy-pasting configs you barely understand

It doesn’t feel like building.

It feels like maintenance.

And I think that’s the real problem.

Not the tools themselves.

But how fragmented everything is.

Every tool:

* different setup
* different conventions
* different expectations

So nothing really fits together.

---

I don’t have a solution (yet).

But I’m starting to explore one.

More on that soon.