A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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What is the aim? People who want to get into it, but does not know how, or experts? Think half of the attraction of selfhosting is the diy aspect.
What extra would this bring if people can just buy the parts cheaper?
And for those who only want the out of the box experience why would this be better than, let's say a beestation? (Yeah price, I know, but you obviously would not have the same support level.)
What is the aim? People who want to get into it, but does not know how, or experts? Think half of the attraction of selfhosting is the diy aspect.
I don't disagree, and I would imagine what I'm offering would only be useful to people who are very early and don't yet know they enjoy the DIY aspect.
The aim, though, is this: I've enjoyed self-hosting. It's given me some powers that most people don't get to have who aren't also technical professionals. I'm also deeply frustrated by the environment created by the various major tech companies. If I can, I'd like to lower the barrier for people to get some of those powers without having to become experts and to make it more feasible for them to do what they want to do, rather than just what they are permitted to do.
What extra would this bring if people can just buy the parts cheaper?
Much shorter time going from "how can I control some of my own data" to "I'm running NextCloud, and its kinda like iCloud/Google Drive/Whatever Microsoft does and it's running right here under my control! Not everyone knows the path from buying parts online to having a working reverse-proxy and reasonable firewall rules. Also, standardization makes it much easier to support people, which is really what the business would be doing.
why would this be better than, let’s say a beestation?
I knew about Synology, but as a NAS product, which assumes a certain familiarity with backup schemes, etc. Kind of a prosumer-only thing. The Beestation is new to me, thanks for the tip. Quite possible what I'm proposing would have some overlap and compete with it, I'll have to read up on it.
Needs serious market research to not flop out of the box.
I admire the thought of lowering the barrier to entry to start self-hosting for "normies". Not sure where you are located, but where I am, this price point is not realistic even for used equipment, not including RAM or storage. I'm not really sure what value add you are bringing to the table that one wouldn't get from just buying used hardware from an office surplus and if one is very inexperienced in self-hostong, looking into something like LTT is partnered with like Hexos.
A small home media server running off a raspberry pi could be that cheap.
this price point is not realistic even for used equipment, not including RAM or storage
I'm doing experiments currently on a refurbished Intel i5-6500 with 8Gb DDR4 and a 0.5Tb SSD. It's tiny, quiet (~45 decibels) and so far runs ~8 watts idle, 25 watts normal usage. I haven't stress-tested the power draw. The router I'm testing with is a Mikrotik hEX lite 5. That's around ~$150, though clearly if you are accustomed to more "rack-mount" style homelab these will seem very modest.
What I'm testing for now is getting representative loads on the devices to see how they perform.
I’m not really sure what value add you are bringing to the table that one wouldn’t get from just buying used hardware from an office surplus and if one is very inexperienced in self-hostong, looking into something like LTT is partnered with like Hexos.
Oh, I totally agree, my value add just isn't there if you are experienced at hosting. The value add is to help people get started, and to keep them running at a modest level. Not everyone wants to experiment with Kubernetes at home or train LLMs. Some folks just want a password manager, a shared calendar, something to organize their tax documents, a pihole, and a Minecraft server for their kids.
I don't follow LTT, I was under the impression it was more hardware reviews for the experienced than tutorials to help people get started.
I've read a bit about Hexos, I'm thinking of some similar things, and it would make sense to work with them. I'm excited for their coming beta.
Would only be worth it if you created a system for easily deploying applications on an already set up subnet with routing preconfigured.
Like set up a single server kubernetes distribution like microk8s or minikube on the server with metalLB and ingress already preconfigured on the server and router. You could also give instructions on how to install a GUI like Lens and how to use it to deploy a few things. Probably using workstation applications would be better than a web UI like Portainer to keep the server lighter, but either might work.
An interesting customer base might be small communal organisations. At our local scouts troop I had a discussion with a friend, who is also in IT. His idea (not fleshed out) was to provide small local organizations with a stack of already configured open source software to support the typical needs of such organizations (like a wordpress website, a nextcloud for file storage and common calender, limesurvey for surveys and event registration, mailman3 for mailing lists,...). Depending on the needs you could sell the initial setup process (your personal work in setting up and skill transfer) or ongoing support. Though such organizations normally don't have much money to give away. So probably its not really worth your time financially (though probably really appreciated in the community).
From reading the comments, I think you could be a lot leaner by selling the $100 setup fee, and telling people which "kit" is supported, and they buy that on their own.
That way you don't have to deal with any of the physical infrastructure of buying/selling/storing hardware, and people can do some customization.
However I do think you'd need to put some restrictions in place so that people don't buy cheap crap that doesn't work and expect you to set it up and support it. They have to buy the kit or other compatible hardware.
I'm not sure what services you'd support, but personally I'd be interested in something like a personal introduction and setup of
Maybe migration of
You could make different prices depending on what service they want, kind of like a bike stop.
I wouldn't want a perpetual subscription, but I could stomach something like $100 setup + $5/mo for limited support for a year.
Best thing for me is that community support also exists for all these things too, but it's hard to do it on your own sometimes.