Aroids
Pothos, Monstera, Philodendron, Alocasia, and the Hoya that gets sold alongside them. Three different answers about water, so start here and then go to your plant.
It depends on the mix, and on whether it is actually an aroid.
8 guides
Start with the plant.
Each page opens with the pieces drawn for it, then says why they are that shape. Growing something that is not here yet? Send a photo and it gets drawn for, and then written up.
Cacti
A real hole, a tray under it, and walls that hold their shape in a south window. No reservoir anywhere near it.
Never a self-watering pot.
Succulents
Echeveria, Haworthia, Sedum, Aloe, Sansevieria and the string-of things. A hole, a tray, and a pot that is not swimming in itself.
Not a self-watering pot.
Alocasia
The aroid that wants to be evenly moist and will still rot if the water stops moving. Which pot depends entirely on what you grow it in.
A reservoir works, but only if the medium wicks.
Pothos
The plant that forgives everything. It is also the one plant here where a reservoir is straightforwardly a good idea.
Yes. This is what the reservoir is for.
Monstera
The pot matters less than what the aerial roots get to hold on to. Both are drawn here, and both come apart to go up.
A hole and a tray, plus a pole. A reservoir only if you have changed the mix.
Hoya
A Hoya flowers when it is comfortable and slightly cramped. Almost everything we would sell you here is a support rather than a bigger pot.
Not a self-watering pot.
Cattleya
The rhizome walks in one direction. The pot is drawn as a run for it to walk along, not as a circle to sit in.
No reservoir, and no saucer of standing water either.
The one question that decides the pot
Standing water suits some plants and kills others, and it is the difference between two pots that look almost the same on a shelf. A pothos on a reservoir is a plant that stops swinging between drenched and bone dry. A cactus on the same reservoir is a plant with a soft base in four months and nothing showing above the soil until it falls over.
So every guide says plainly whether a self-watering pot suits that plant, and sends you to the right shape. Where the answer is yes, we mean our vessel with the drain plug in the bottom, because a reservoir that can only be topped up collects salt until the roots will not drink.
And the second one
Shallow and wide, or narrow and deep. The wet layer at the bottom of a pot is a fixed depth for a given mix, so a wide shallow pan and a narrow deep column holding the same litre and a half behave nothing alike: in the pan that wet layer is most of the root ball and in the column it is the bottom fifth. A Cattleya wants the run. An Alocasia wants the depth. That is why there are two plain pots on this site and not one.