Not for me as I'm not an iOS user, but I contribute to all FOSS software I find useful as it helps motivate the developer and why should everything be free? My time sure as hell isn't.

So a small fee for a well developed product, that offers something handy and keeps getting support is more than acceptable. Also, it sets a barrier to entry for making it good. If you expect users to pay $5/$10 for something that is your hobby, it had better be good.

Good luck with it.

I always see a lot of comments about how negative Lemmy is toward AI. If ever there is a demographic ideal for AI use, it's the current user base on Lemmy. If you can't convince people on here about AI, then it's not the user that is the problem, it's that the product is wrong (or just plain useless).

I was just thinking this week, that those who self host (and more importantly, those who program the code we self host), are at the front line of the modern digital resistance: in the sense that the world is burning due to the greed of the tech bros that run our daily lives. Convienience for the masses is what gives them power over us, and any one who rejects their systems is helping to fight back.

Voting with your wallet helps, so not giving them your money is the first step. Then managing and keeping your own data private is the next one.

I only started using Cloudflare tunnels recently, but I'm now using the self hosted alternative Pangolin on a VPS for private services, and I keep the Cloudflare tunnel for public web hosting, i.e WordPress. This also allows easy restriction to the WordPress login page for other users via Google auth etc which is something very simple with CF.

Having split up my private/public services to seperate tunnels also means I don't stand the chance of taking the public services offline with my constant tinkering of Pangolin and the VPS it runs on.

I have pushed the CF tunnel for file transfers occasionally (which is against their terms), but it hits remarkable speeds for a 'free' service.

The absolute irony... I've used Immich for nearly 2 years without fail; it's never skipped a beat. Today I update to the stable release and my Immich mobile app now has a sync error warning. This is the first issue I've ever had.

EDIT: Phew! Clear File Cache in mobile app has sorted the error. For a moment I thought the universe was against me.

Not FOSS, and with an entry price tag, but I ditched my OPNSense firewall for a Ubiquiti UDM Pro SE router about 2 years ago and invested in 3 of their cameras plus a doorbell and love it. I previously had Blue Iris for CCTV.

The Unifi Protect app is great. Easy to navigate, great detection, and easy to store clips. There's no subscription fees, and I get a great firewall/router alongside a CCTV package.

Oh, and you can now add 3rd party cameras to the Unifi Protect system.

I read your post last night, thought I'd reply this morning and am disappointed in the replies you've already had. So you've got issues with your self hosting, and it annoys people you haven't figured out the solution?!? Odd.

Anyway, well done on recommending Runtipi as I've never heard of it and looks interesting. I'm on the look out for things to recommend to people, and that looks good.

As for what else there is, there was a thread here this week asking similar, and lots got mentioned in there. I'm too lazy to find the link, but dig about on the 1st page. Most have already been repeated in here already.

I think self hosting is a journey, where you learn as you go. It's all part of the fun of it. And perhaps using a platform that has a healthy amount of solutions already posted is the key for you rather than focussing on a one-click interface. I myself use Unraid, and that community is full of Q&A for every type of user.

I think the thing with self hosting is that it's a hobby, and when it goes wrong, it's part of the hobby to figure it out. But in terms of business, then it becomes a risk. By all means try and use FOSS to improve solutions. I use a self hosted dropbox / file delivery to clients as it can saturate my 1Gbps fibre which is faster than most cloud file shares, but only because if it goes wrong one day, it's a 2 min job to use a cloud solution instead (temporarily) and email clients with the alternative solution. But I would never build something up that only ever worked via one system.

Don't just have data backups, have service backups. And in that regard, you may decide it's just easier to do as others have said and use enterprise solutions from the start.

If using a self hosted Office suite, have all files duped into a single Google Drive account for example. That way you're only paying for one Google account and have an emergency backup solution in place. EDIT: I've just recently degoogled and use Infomaniak in Europe for my office suite backup as its free for the 1st user. Experimenting with other non-Google/Microsoft solutions might be part of your journey.

You may decide the savings aren't worth the effort in what you're trying to achieve. EDIT: but I want to add that this is all part of the fun of what we do: thinking outside the box!

For what it's worth given the age of this thread and disagreement going on in it, I would recommend Unraid.

Easy for a beginner, with enough to take you up to intermediate level: a web GUI for pretty much all the required terminal commands. It's been around for years, is not going away, but instead getting updated. Works on any old eBay hardware and most of all, the community there are very supportive of beginners. There's also lots of YouTube tutorials.

It ticks all the boxes for easy self hosting. It's just not for Linux protocol purists.

EDIT: I'm learning a lot from this thread, and it's interesting to see how tolerant people are for self hosting. I would add in my vote for Unraid: it allows me to be dynamic with the time I have for self hosting. I'm sometimes extremely busy and don't have the time to keep my self hosting updated, so the web GUI is essential for basic maintenance. Then there are times when I do want to waste an afternoon trying something in terminal and learning more, and that's when Unraid again comes to the rescue. I couldn't self host with 100% terminal, and neither would I want to with 100% GUI. The best self hosting platform is one that can mix them up efficiently and effectively. I am keen to try some others mentioned here, as some look quite interesting. However NAS is a massive element of what I need for my homelab, so Unraid will stay for now.

Take from this anything of use to you: I syncthing my important Unraid server stuff to a MacBook running Backblaze with a 14TB external drive. DNS is handled by NextDNS in the cloud anyway, so it's just Immich and other random family oriented services for me. I use Pangolin for exposed services.

You could use syncthing (or Resilio) over a tailscale or headscale network or whateveritispeopleuse to a remote PC.

My Docker compose files and VMs are backed up once a week via plugins on Unraid, which of course get duped via syncthing to the MacBook.

I did try a Hetzner Storage Box for a while to replace Backblaze, but the hassle of having to keep an eye on the syncing was a pain and I fell back in to Backblaze on the MacBook as it's a set and forget (as long as they don't change the filetypes ignored...). I may go back to a Storage Box again.

I do also want to look into redundancy with a spare server though so it becomes quicker/easier to get it all up and running in event of failure. This is where selfhosting starts getting serious!

Just chucking this out there to help with the fediverse.

Similar to your story 1: I needed to renew my mortgage and it was an instant thing if I did it via their app (for security reasons apparently), or it became a paper form and post thing.

I tried to do it via a web portal, but that didn't work. I called them up to see how else I could complete the renewal, but that opened a can of worms of speaking to a woman on the phone, utterly unable to fathom why I couldn't install their app on my Android phone: GrapheneOS (play store installed, but it denies their app on my dangerous 'rooted' phone).

The woman I was speaking to thought I was an idiot who didn't know how to use Android. FFS.

I use a Pangolin reverse proxy with OIDC (PocketID) for family access to services, along with CrowdSec. For the Immich app access which needs to bypass auth login through the reverse proxy, I use 'link share' in Pangolin that gives me header tokens that can be entered in to the Immich app under Advanced settings.

I've been an Immich user for over 2 years now, so it's been a journey for me to implement it to this standard.

Or as someone else suggests, try CloudFlare with something like Google Auth login. Just be aware that you are then exposing all your traffic to Cloudflare. I take that as a small sacrifice for simplicity.

That's a BBC link. A website with zero ads.

just schedule an email to send at a later date/time, then if you don't login to cancel it, off it goes.

I've had pihole running in the past, then Adguard, but moved to NextDNS several years ago and have been happy with it. For a small fee, it removes all need for self hosting your own. I set up profiles for the kids, wife etc, then set the DNS in their phones, tablets, so I know its always working wherever they are. You can set local IPs in it if you want, but I use a reverse proxy for all LAN requests instead.

Only slight issue I've had with it was recently making several quick changes to DNS in Cloudflare, and NextDNS took several hours to propagate which was a PITA at the time.

Edit: I've just seen that they now offer a free tier which they didn't in the past.

Thanks for that. Read Pt1 and it all makes sense.

I've found that Music Assistant has worked well for group casting audio for me with Google Minis and Chromecast Audios. Although I've not had it running all day, but it has removed the hassle of it stopping from WiFi disconnects from my phone.

Always looking for new ways to do things, so will look out for pts 2 & 3.

I ran BI for years, but left them for a Ubiquiti device. Yes it required new cameras, and of course the investment in a UniFi device, but damn is UniFi Protect good. Does great detection and no subscription or fees of any kind, plus gets frequent updates and feature improvents. Not a solution for everyone, but I believed the hype of BI for years and thought there was nothing better. Turns out there is.

Ah thanks. I know I have scratched the surface with what MA can do, and it is one of the more useful things I self host. Music Assistant and Immich are the absolute must haves.

I'll admit I've not tried Traefik yet, but I see Caddy as being to web servers (and reverse proxies), what WireGuard is to VPNs.

It does what it needs to well, with a minimal config file. And if I learn and get comfortable with Caddy, then I know it can do anything I will ever need of a web server down the line with no need for me to ever change setup.

So among my services I self host, a few need to be publicly accessible for work. For those I wish to remain private, Caddy only allows private IP ranges, plus then Authelia as auth which is set to 30 days. There is then the login of each service behind Authelia as well. It's as good as it needs to be for my needs.

If I were only self hosting private services, then as others have said, I would put all access through a VPN.

Edit: I should add that of course the private services are then only accessed via VPN to the router (part of the private IP ranges). Caddy as reverse proxy also obfuscates the subdomain names I use.