Pretty much what the title says, I was wondering, since I want to invest on self hosting applications and my raspberry pi 3 b+ can barely function. I don’t have enormous expectations, just docker containers, nextcloud, pihosted, jellyfin… Any further suggestions (regarding the hardware) will be much appreciated.
If you need something that packs more power than a Pi while still being somewhat energy efficient and small form factor then yes, the NUCs are generally pretty good.
Personally I’m running a NUC from 2018 with a 8th gen i3 that’s pulling double duty as both a server running about ~10 docker containers, and as a media center.
The server part still runs flawlessly, though the media center part is getting a bit slow when opening websites on it.
As others have already said, one drawback is that there’s only space for one drive, so at least a NAS or external USB storage is recommended for backups.