Tools and insights for those who lead tech and shape the stack
ArchDevTools is a working hub for software architects and developers — self-hosted alternatives, open-source tools, and field notes from people who actually run this stuff in production.
$ archdevtools search --self-hosted monitoring
→ Grafana [self-hosted] ★ 9/10
→ Prometheus [self-hosted] ★ 9/10
→ Datadog [saas] ★ 8/10
$ _
Tools worth knowing about
1Password
Password manager with strong developer-focused tooling — CLI, SSH agent, and secrets injection.
From $2.99/month individual, team plans from $7.99/user/month.
Amazon S3
The industry-standard managed object storage service, effectively infinite scale with zero ops.
Usage-based, from around $0.023/GB/month.
Backstage
CNCF-backed, open-source developer portal and service catalog framework, originally built at Spotify.
Free (open source, CNCF).
BookStack
Simple, self-hosted platform for organizing documentation as books, chapters, and pages.
Free (open source).
Datadog
Full-stack managed observability — metrics, logs, traces, and APM in one SaaS platform.
Usage-based, from roughly $15/host/month.
Docker Desktop
The GUI and daemon most developers use to run containers locally.
Free for personal use and small businesses (under 250 employees / $10M revenue). Paid for larger orgs.
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A framework for the build-vs-buy call that goes beyond 'can our team build this' to the question that actually matters: who owns it in three years?
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