So I can backup and move my data as I please. Also means if it’s self hosted I can access it from anywhere.

Nextcloud was painfully slow on a cheap HDD based VPS, I finally moved it to SSD and it’s been fast. With redis and SSD its quick. I’d take a look at your system to make sure that’s not the cause.

And if JF won’t work for you, Emby is pretty decent as well.

It’s no different than NGiNX, put in your config and it just works.

I have a VPS with NGiNX and tailscale to get stuff thru a NAT.