This is an inherent value trap that’s really not sustainable for VC backed startups. Which will inevitably burn to the ground as the revenue dwindles. Pocket, Omnivore, Upnext, your next favorite server based read-later app. One of the reason I believe is the market is saturated with undifferentiated apps that’s all free.

While I think self-hosting is great, you probably want to solve mobile capturing and consumption, hosting a server, then paring a modern maintained mobile app that you can configure so it connects to your self-hosted server. Omnivore maybe your best shot? Although maybe vibe code may get you there sooner?

If you are on Apple ecosystem though, there is another self-sustainable way that doesn’t require you to host anything on your VPS, that works with mobile, which is iCloud/Cloudkit based apps.

There are at least a dozen options here. I made one of these:

- no account, no server, no tracking

- Liquid Glass Mac app that launch from menu bar.

- Separate iOS app purposefully designed for mobile

- Doesn’t use a browser extension, but monitors double copies from clipboard.

- Shows all the cards in a waterfall grid, so you don’t have to click into these cards to see what the link is about. Every website you use, from TikTok to GoodReads, will show up as well designed cards.

- Uses Apple Intelligence on device to auto-tag links.

- free to capture without limit, has a one time purchase option (that removes the sub nudge) as well as affordable subscription option with PPP in 10 territories (purchase power parity pricing).

I believe it’s the sweet spot in this category, and with the subscription revenue we have, it will never shutdown as long as Apple still offers iCloud, plus, you own the binary.

It’s at https://doublememory.com if this sounds interesting to you.