Michael Soto - Elestio blog

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Michael Soto

I'm a senior content strategist & technical writer working for Elest.io. I turn complex self-hosted solutions into clear, actionable guides. 7 years crafting developer content. Coffee-fueled, deadline-ready, obsessed with finding the right words.

Outline: The Open-Source Notion Alternative Your Team Actually Needs

Outline: The Open-Source Notion Alternative Your Team Actually Needs

Your team's knowledge is scattered everywhere. Meeting notes in Google Docs, project specs in Notion, onboarding guides in random Slack threads, and that critical process document... somewhere in someone's email? This is the reality for most growing teams. And honestly? Notion and Confluence were supposed to

Immich API: Build Custom Photo Workflows and Automate Your Library

Immich API: Build Custom Photo Workflows and Automate Your Library

I didn't think I'd care about a photo management API. Then I realized my family has 50,000 photos scattered across devices, and Google's AI is training on every single one of them. Immich changed that. It's a self-hosted Google Photos alternative

Cal.com API: Build Custom Booking Flows and Integrate with Your Stack

Cal.com API: Build Custom Booking Flows and Integrate with Your Stack

Look, I'm going to be real with you: most scheduling tools treat their API like an afterthought. A few endpoints here, some webhooks there, and you're left duct-taping everything together. Cal.com is different. Their API is the product. Everything you can do in the UI,

We Calculated How Much Slack Actually Costs—Then Found Two Alternatives That Save Teams $15,000/Year

We Calculated How Much Slack Actually Costs—Then Found Two Alternatives That Save Teams $15,000/Year

We Calculated How Much Slack Actually Costs—Then Found Two Alternatives That Save Teams $15,000/Year Your CFO just sent that email again. "Can we talk about our software costs?" You know what's coming. Slack is eating 15% of your SaaS budget, and it'

Zulip API Integration: Build Custom Bots and Automate Team Notifications

Zulip API Integration: Build Custom Bots and Automate Team Notifications

Zulip API Integration: Build Custom Bots and Automate Team Notifications Here's the thing about team chat: the real power isn't in the messages themselves—it's in what you can automate around them. CI/CD pipeline failed? Your team should know instantly. New customer signed

Why Your Team Should Ditch Trello for a Self-Hosted Kanban Board

Why Your Team Should Ditch Trello for a Self-Hosted Kanban Board

Why Your Team Should Ditch Trello for a Self-Hosted Kanban Board You know that moment when your entire marketing team is staring at a blank screen because Trello is down? Or when finance asks why you're paying $12.50 per user per month for what's essentially

The Best Open-Source ChatGPT Interfaces: LobeChat vs Open WebUI vs LibreChat

The Best Open-Source ChatGPT Interfaces: LobeChat vs Open WebUI vs LibreChat

The ChatGPT interface has become the standard for how we interact with AI. That clean chat bubble layout, the markdown rendering, the ability to switch models mid-conversation—we all expect it now. Here's what's interesting: that interface is no longer proprietary. A wave of open-source projects

Supabase Authentication: Implement OAuth, Magic Links and Row-Level Security

Supabase Authentication: Implement OAuth, Magic Links and Row-Level Security

Authentication is the part of building apps that nobody wants to deal with. You'd rather be shipping features, not debugging why OAuth tokens expire at 3 AM. That's exactly why Supabase Auth exists. It handles the painful stuff—OAuth providers, passwordless magic links, session management—so

Why Penpot Is the Open-Source Figma Alternative Your Design Team Needs

Why Penpot Is the Open-Source Figma Alternative Your Design Team Needs

Your design tool bill just went up. Again. If you're running a small agency, a startup, or even a marketing team that dabbles in UI mockups, you've probably noticed that Figma's pricing keeps climbing. In 2025, teams are facing 40% higher costs year-over-year. For

InfluxDB + Telegraf: Build a Complete Metrics Pipeline for Your Infrastructure

InfluxDB + Telegraf: Build a Complete Metrics Pipeline for Your Infrastructure

If you're still using Prometheus for everything, you're probably overcomplicating your life. Don't get me wrong—Prometheus is fantastic for certain workloads. But when you need to store millions of metrics per second with flexible retention policies and actually query them without pulling your

Why Your Website Needs Instant Search (And How Meilisearch Makes It Easy)

Why Your Website Needs Instant Search (And How Meilisearch Makes It Easy)

Have you ever visited an online store, typed something in the search bar, and waited... and waited... only to get results that didn't match what you were looking for? You probably left. Most people do. Here's the thing: users expect Google-speed search everywhere they go. When

Why Your Small Business Needs a Real Ticketing System (And How Zammad Delivers)

Why Your Small Business Needs a Real Ticketing System (And How Zammad Delivers)

Let me paint a picture you probably recognize: customer emails scattered across three different inboxes, support requests buried in social media DMs, and that one urgent issue from last Tuesday that somehow slipped through the cracks. Sound familiar? If you're running a small business and still managing customer

Zep + LangChain: Give Your AI Assistant Persistent Memory

Zep + LangChain: Give Your AI Assistant Persistent Memory

Your chatbot has amnesia. Every time a user starts a new session, your AI assistant forgets everything—their name, preferences, previous conversations, all of it. Gone. You're essentially building a goldfish with a PhD. This isn't a minor inconvenience. It's why your customer support

Why Private AI Is the Biggest Self-Hosting Trend of 2025

Why Private AI Is the Biggest Self-Hosting Trend of 2025

Why Private AI Is the Biggest Self-Hosting Trend of 2025 Something interesting happened this year. While everyone was obsessing over ChatGPT subscriptions and Claude API bills, a quiet revolution was brewing in home offices and server rooms around the world. People started running their own AI. Not toy projects. Not

Why More Teams Are Choosing Self-Hosted Solutions Over SaaS in 2025

Why More Teams Are Choosing Self-Hosted Solutions Over SaaS in 2025

Something shifted in 2024. I started noticing it in Reddit threads, then in Hacker News discussions, and eventually in conversations with CTOs and IT managers: people are tired of SaaS. Not all SaaS, mind you. But there's a growing frustration with the subscription treadmill, the endless price hikes,