As I stated in a previous post, if you're looking for a hosted reader, I would recommend Bazqux. I've been using it since GR's demise, and it's working well.

But as the death of The Old Reader shows, there is likely to be a lot of volatility in the RSS reader market in the coming months, and as others have said, hosting your own is the most reliable option.

I had almost given up on finding a self-hosted option that I liked. Although I subscribed to Bazqux, I kept a lookout for new self-hosted options. A week or so ago, I came across Leed. It's the first self-hosted option that I've really enjoyed using. Certainly worth a try. I'm now using both Bazqux and Leed in parallel, and I'll do that for as long as it takes for one to stand out as the best option, although Leed has an automatic advantage because it's self-hosted.

Leed and the Leed web site are French, with no built-in translation, but one user has put together an English version, and that's what I'm using.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm also testing another self-hosted option, Miniflux, which is promising (although it's a "river of news"-style reader rather than a folder-based reader)

I'm sure I've already posted far too much detail about my seemingly endless search for the best Google Reader replacement. But as I seem to be nearing the end of my journey, I feel obliged to sum up. Briefly:

Previously: Google Reader (just for sync, never used it to read), FeedDemon on desktop, Press on Android.

Now: Bazqux on desktop, JustReader on Android (only option at the moment).

First of all, many thanks to Nosh for his encouragement to try BazQux. Indeed I had already tried it, very briefly, but there was so much I didn't like about the web interface:

• the all-white background, with no option to change it (why do they do that? Am I really the only person who can't stand all-white backgrounds?)
• The left (feeds) column was too narrow (many feed titles truncated), with no option to change it.
• Default font size settings seemed odd -- again no options.
• And a few other things besides. Overall, it seemed inelegant.

But Nosh wasn't the only person recommending BazQux. I kept coming across favourable reviews on the web. So I though I'd have another go. And pretty soon the speed was addictive. I think I've tried most of the GR alternatives, and BaxQux is the fastest. Feedbin (which was my favoured option before Bazqux) is almost as fast after its recent server upgrade.

I was impressed enough to spend a couple of hours re-jigging the BazQux interface to see if I could achieve a usable UI (using userContent.css in Firefox), and I came up with this: grey background, wider left column, lots of font and colour changes, padding where I thought BazQux needed some air, etc.

So BazQux it is. I like the fact that it is a paid-for option, it has been going for a year (i.e. before the GR meltdown) and the developer has said on Twitter that revenues are already more than covering his costs. Nothing is risk-free, but...

The only disappointment so far: that I can't hack Feeddemon to use it with Bazqux the way you can for Reedah. I have hex-edited a version of FeedDemon and tried to use it with Bazqux (which also has a Google API clone), but I can't log in. But that was a long shot anyway, and not exactly a long-term solution -- the developer of Basqux is supporting the Open Reader API initiative, and that seems sensible. Let's hope it comes about. And what makes Bazqux stand out in any case is that the speed of its interface means it is a real option for reading in volume. I might not miss FeedDemon as much as I expected.

By the way, the author of BazQux puts the speed of the site down to coding in Haskell. I'm not a programmer, so it means nothing to me, but the conversation may interest others here.