Hi everyone, I posted about my Safebox project earlier, but now I’d like to hear your thoughts on something a bit broader. I’ve been noticing a pattern in self-hosting communities, and I’m curious if others see it too.
Whenever someone asks for a more beginner-friendly solution, something with a UI, automated setup, or fewer manual configs, there’s often a response like: “If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting.”
Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour. Don’t get me wrong, I love the technical side of self-hosting. I enjoy tinkering, breaking things, fixing them, learning along the way. That’s how most of us got into it.
But if we want more people to own their data, escape Big Tech, and embrace open-source alternatives, shouldn’t we welcome solutions that lower the entry barrier?
There’s room for:
- people who want full control and custom setups
- people who want semi-manual but guided
- people who want it to work with minimal friction
Just like not every Linux user compiles from source, but they’re still Linux users.
Where do you stand? Should self-hosting stay DIY only or is there value in easier, more accessible ways to self-host?
Safebox aims to make self-hosting more approachable without sacrificing data ownership, so I genuinely want your honest take before releasing it more widely.
Some technical highlights of the project, for those interested:
Safebox runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, supports both x86 and ARM64 (including Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, and others), and handles domain/subdomain setup, Let’s Encrypt certificates, DNS configuration, reverse proxy (nginx), and also offers WireGuard-based remote access.
The project is currently in beta, and we’d really appreciate feedback from anyone interested in testing it, whether it’s about usability, stability, features, design, or honestly anything at all. You can find all the info about beta testing on our Discord channel.
If you’d like to try it out, check the Github repo: https://github.com/safeboxnetwork/framework-scheduler
Website: https://safebox.network/
Discord: https://discord.gg/aBP8bz6N8J
Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a look or shares their thoughts.
You must log in or register to comment.
I a desperate to self host, but do not know how to code. I use Debian, installing what I need for work, music, photo editing. All very low level, but accessible to me and far better than Windows. Keeping fingers crossed for something accessible between the full “black belt” level user and, well, me.
I direct everyone to https://yunohost.org/ As you describe it your project looks very similar.
People make it too complicated. When I want to self host something I just install the Nix package and call it a day.
When I get around to upgradingy storage, I’ll just do a very simple RAID setup on some reliable HDDs.
I’m super allergic to unnecessary complexity. I don’t want a perfect setup, I want a setup that is reliable with almost no maintenance. I’m skipping the 80% of the effort it takes to get the last 20% of the result.
I loathe this approach. But for me its more of a hobby and even then, I too am alergic to overt complexity, but saying no maintenance is asking for a security hole to open, sure it can be automated away, but it still takes at least SOME work.
The main reason I dislike this approach is by doing things as simply as possible you delegate the control to the developer of your solution. Its not a one size fits all thing. Some solutions can for sure be turnkey, but most should require some work, because we do this to regain control, not delegate more of it away.
I’ve used Dockstarter in the beginning. It helped me understand the concept of docker compose files and such
I’ve seen many projects like this over the years, they never seem to take off for some reason. Freedombox seemed pretty interesting to me back in the day, but I already had some old hardware and didn’t mind learning how to set things up myself. I think Sandstorm is/was another option. And I think Nextcloud is also a framework of sorts (idk, I don’t use it). To an extent TrueNAS is also a kind of an all-in-one solution that has one-click installs of most of these apps.
Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour.
Its not this, it’s that there are very serious risks to self hosting (dataloss, hacks etc), and if they aren’t prepared for them, itll be catastrophic.
The gatekeeping isnt just for fun, there are actual risks and downsides.
As for prepackaging an appliance, we already have a model for how that plays out. There are millions of ISP provided routers and IoT things, and every other day there is a new breach involving them.
Shoutout to that dude last week posting a fully public fileshare service because he wanted to “practice” selfhosting
Link?
(sorry, could not resist)
Does the shirt become purple if I click it?
How can security be made accessible? I’m a noob at self-hosting (I can deploy Docker containers and all that). There are loads of guides for beginners. I haven’t found any accessible info about security to learn from in an incremental way. Surely the advice can’t be that self-hosting shouldn’t be done till you’ve done a undergraduate qualification worth of learning about cyber security first.
A device on your local lan is pretty accessible. Don’t open ports from the internet and be sure to back up important data. Something like homeassistant or pi-hole on a raspberry pi is very accessible. Remote access is where thing start getting tricky.
If you want to host something publicly, buy a $5 VPS and install a web server on it. Try hosting static websites. Don’t put anything sensitive on it and if something happens to it, you are out your 5 bucks for the month and learned a lesson.
No thanks, Discord is proprietary.
Isn’t docker proprietary as well?
I’m struggling to understand what this is and why someone should use it
Safebox is basically a framework to help you install and manage self hosted apps. It also includes features like remote access, backup, monitoring, and disk management (the last three are still in development). Safebox handles all the setup for you, DNS configuration, SSL certificates, and so on. If you want remote access, all you need to do is provide a domain (it can be an existing one, or you can register it with us). Of course, you can still use it locally, remote access is just an optional feature.
For people who don’t want to deal with the technical side, or who are still learning but want to try out self-hosting, I think Safebox makes things a lot easier and gives them a solid starting point
