Just Use Ory Network

Self-Hosting Ory Isn't Worth It

Working with Ory is honestly great, until you start self-hosting it. Once you're running Kratos, Hydra, Keto, and Oathkeeper yourself, it becomes a nightmare. You have to worry about security and a whole bunch of other concerns, and you need to wire up five different endpoints just to get a project working correctly.

No Management UI

I've actually managed to self-host the full Ory stack successfully, so it's not that it can't be done. What puts me off is that there's no management UI of any kind. Everything is headless, so every interaction and every administrative task has to go through the API, which turns even simple work into a chore.

Just Use Ory Network

If you ever decide to use Ory, do yourself a favor and use Ory Network instead. Their production plan isn't even expensive. It's $70/m. Honestly, I'm convinced nobody self-hosts the entire Ory stack. People might self-host individual components like Keto, Kratos, or Oathkeeper, but running the whole thing yourself is another story. I don't think anyone actually does that. It's just too difficult to work with when you're not on Ory Network.