It’s interesting I have the exact opposite perspective with AI in regards to selfhosting.

The customizability is now endless for me, I can do anything, customize anything, problems that are typically 1-2 hours are fixed in <5 minutes.

Don’t want to fiddle w/ a GUI? Shoot off a message and it’s done.

I had tons of stability issues within the last year unfortunately, I would still recommend against it.

OP if you don’t mind running this through a Hermes / OpenClaw harness this is probably the easiest way with pre built email connectors. Also if you don’t mind spending a few bucks a month DeepSeek v4 will blow out anything you run locally for pennies (or gpt luna as of last wed.)

It can also set up its own custom connector if needed and run as needed via CRON.

This is a pretty solid list, besides Code Quality. Most of the links there are user error. It’s akin to blaming a Junior dev for breaking production imo and undermines the entire page.

The most recent release of SOTA models being both more intelligent and 20-30% cheaper is really fighting against this argument (Opus 5.5 & Sol 6).

Anyone have any recommendations?

This may have been true last year but nowadays AI is far better and more thorough, and faster than 90% of devs when driven by someone knowledgeable.