We are a small team, but we take correspondence seriously. If you have a question about building a personal AI server, a correction to one of our guides, or an idea for a topic we should cover, this is the place to send it. We do our best to respond to genuine questions, though we cannot offer one-on-one build consulting or troubleshooting support for individual machines.
Before You Write
A surprising number of questions are already answered in the guides. Before sending a message, a quick check of these pages usually resolves the most common ones:
- Choosing personal AI server hardware — component selection, budgets, and what each tier can run.
- Building the server — assembly, cooling, and first boot.
- Software and models — inference stacks, model formats, and how to serve them.
- Privacy and security — keeping a local server locked down.
- Costs and energy — what it really costs to run AI at home.
If your question is about a specific model's behavior, a particular error message, or an unusual hardware fault, the broader self-hosting community is usually the fastest route to an answer. The communities around each software project are active and generous, and a well-asked question with your logs attached will get you further than an email to us ever could.
What We Can and Cannot Help With
We are happy to hear about: factual errors in our articles, hardware we should test, software worth covering, and reader builds we can learn from. We are not able to provide: individual machine troubleshooting, remote debugging, purchasing advice for your exact budget and country, or legal guidance about local regulations. We are writers and builders, not a support desk.
When you do write, please include enough context to be useful — the model you are running, your operating system, and the exact wording of any error. A one-line "it doesn't work" message is impossible to act on, and we will likely have to ask for the details anyway.
Send a Message
Direct Email
If you prefer plain email, you can reach the editorial team at hello@personal-ai-server.com. This is the same inbox as the contact form; use whichever is more convenient. We check it a few times a week, so a reply can take a few days.
For anything time-sensitive or genuinely urgent, note that we are not a hardware vendor and cannot help with orders, shipping, or warranty claims for products purchased elsewhere. Those inquiries should go directly to the retailer or manufacturer you bought from.
For Vendors and PR
We do not accept payment for coverage, but we do consider loaner hardware for testing, with the understanding that we disclose the loan and retain full editorial control over the outcome. If you represent a hardware or software vendor and would like to discuss a review unit, send a short note describing the product and what makes it relevant to self-hosters. We reply to the pitches that are actually relevant to our readers; we ignore the rest.
Affiliate and sponsorship inquiries should be brief and honest. We run a small number of clearly-disclosed affiliate links, and we are selective about them. If your program requires us to alter a verdict or bury a negative finding, we are not interested — full stop.
Corrections Policy
We take accuracy seriously, and we correct mistakes promptly when they are pointed out. If you spot an error — a wrong spec, an outdated number, a claim we have not sourced — tell us the article and the specific passage. We will verify it, fix it, and note the correction at the bottom of the article. Anonymous tips are fine, but a name and email let us follow up if we need clarification.
Thank you for taking the time. The self-hosting community is built on people sharing what they learn, and every message — correction, suggestion, or simply "this helped me" — keeps this project going.
Frequently Asked Questions (Before You Email)
I bought the parts from your guide and it will not boot. Can you help?
We cannot provide individual troubleshooting, but the building guide has a first-boot checklist that covers the most common causes — RAM not fully seated, a missing CPU power cable, or a monitor plugged into the wrong port. Work through that list first; it resolves the overwhelming majority of "dead on arrival" builds. If it does not, the communities around your motherboard and GPU brands are the fastest source of help.
Can you recommend a specific build for my exact budget?
We publish three build tiers in the hardware guide, with the reasoning behind each, precisely so you can adapt them to your local prices and availability. Prices and stock vary too much between countries for us to give bespoke advice over email, and a recommendation tuned for one market is often useless in another. The tiers are the framework; your local prices fill in the numbers.
Will you review my product?
We consider loaner hardware for testing when it is relevant to self-hosters, with the understanding that we disclose the loan and keep full editorial control. Send a short note describing the product and why it matters to our readers. We cannot reply to every pitch, and we do not accept paid reviews under any circumstances.
Can I republish or translate your guides?
Generally, we are happy to discuss republication and translation with clear attribution and a link back, on a case-by-case basis. Scraping our content wholesale and republishing it without permission is not welcome, and we do pursue that when we find it. For a specific request, email us with details of where and how you want to use the material.
Something on the site is outdated or wrong. What should I do?
Tell us. Include the article title, the specific passage, and — if you have it — the correct information with a source. We verify every correction and update the article promptly when it checks out. We note corrections at the bottom of the affected piece with the date, because transparency about what changed is part of being a resource worth trusting.
What Happens After You Send a Message
We triage the inbox a few times a week. Corrections with a clear source jump the queue and are usually acted on within days. Genuine reader questions get a personal reply when we have something genuinely useful to add — which is most of the time, but not all of the time, and never instantly. Pitches and partnership inquiries are read and filtered; the relevant ones get a reply, and the rest are simply not a fit.
We are a three-person team, so a reply can take up to a week. If you need help faster, the self-hosting community and the forums around your specific software are almost always quicker than we are, and they are excellent. Email us when you have a correction, a story, an idea, or a question only we can answer.
Thank you again for reading, and for caring enough to reach out. It genuinely keeps us going.
Tips for Getting a Faster, Better Reply
We reply to a lot of messages, and a few small things make the difference between a quick, useful answer and a slow, frustrating back-and-forth. None of this is mandatory — it just helps us help you.
First, tell us what you are actually trying to accomplish, not just the symptom. "I want to run a 13B model with long context on a $800 budget" is far more answerable than "what GPU should I buy?" The goal tells us which trade-offs matter to you, and it often reveals that the question you asked is not quite the question you meant.
Second, include the specifics when reporting a problem: the model, the engine, the operating system, the exact error text, and what you already tried. A message that includes these details can often be answered in a single reply, while one that omits them requires several rounds of clarification before we can say anything useful.
Third, be patient with the response time. We are three people with other jobs, and the inbox is checked a few times a week. If your issue is urgent, the self-hosting community — the forums around your specific software, the hardware subreddits, the project chat rooms — will almost always answer faster than we can, and often with more depth, because they are in the trenches with you.
How We Use What You Send
We read everything, but not everything becomes public. A correction with a clear source becomes an article update, usually credited in the note at the bottom. A good reader question often becomes a paragraph, a section, or even a whole new article, because the questions readers ask are the best map of what we should write next. A story about your build — what worked, what did not, what you would do differently — informs how we frame future guides, even when we do not quote it directly.
We do not publish your name, email, or personal details without permission, and we do not share the inbox with anyone. The trust that lets a stranger send us a detailed question is the same trust we ask our readers to place in the guides themselves, and we take it seriously.
The Kind of Message We Love Most
If you want to make our week, tell us what you built and how the guides helped — or where they fell short. A short note that says "I followed guide one, bought a used card, and I am running a 13B model" is genuinely the fuel this project runs on. It tells us the work matters, and it tells us where to aim next. We read every one of these, and we are grateful for every single one.
The self-hosting community is built on exactly this kind of sharing — people who figured something out and passed it on. If you have learned something from this site, consider passing a little of it back: answer a newcomer's question in a forum, write up your build, or just send us a note. The cycle is what keeps the whole thing alive.
Whatever brought you here, thank you for being part of it. Now go build something.