I've been running my own MatterMost (a Slack clone) instance for a little while now. I've invited some close friends, a tiny bit of family, and colleagues I particularly appreciate. It's been fantastic so far. I decided to host it on a VPS because upload speed at home truly sucks, and hosting it locally wouldn't turn into a good experience for other users. Still, I own all the data. I've told all the other members that I do, and they're OK with it.

I bought a nice sounding domain name, got an SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, and was good to go! My mental health has been increasing since then (no joke).