Comment by PaulKeeble
4 years ago
Nowadays you can buy a NAS and plug it into your router and then click the install nextcloud option and you have it running, then you add the app on your phone. Its no where near as difficult to get these level of capability as it used to now that Docker is integrated in a user friendly way in a lot of NAS software.
I run a server at home and I’ve set up Nextcloud.
I don’t trust it to be more reliable than a paid service. The thing about self hosted solutions is you’re completely on your own if something goes wrong. You need to make sure you’re backing things up, that you can restore your Nextcloud configuration if your sql database takes a dump or you fat finger and delete some config files (I’ve done both). Or if you have a power outage or lose internet connection and can’t access vital files, or even something simple like a bad software update causing issues.
While a great option, one can’t simply spin up next cloud and then move everything over like you would a Saas solution as a typical layman.
If something goes wrong with your google account (or other SaaS that would lose your data, or ban you without recourse), you are not even on your own, you're just trully fucked. It's poof gone and no local/internet tech geek will be able to help you.
If something goes wrong with your at home nextcloud, you still have the data/hw, and you can either get help troubleshooting from someone who understands what they're doing, or you can try yourself (which will take more time). You're not on your own. And even if you are, you can just shelve it, and defer the recovery for later. But unless it figuratively crashed and literally burned, you're not fundamentally prevented from recovering your data.
Yeah totally agree with this. I back up all my important data, but I’d still prefer to Apple/Fastmail/Dropbox be the primary provider of a service and back it up to my server (and other cloud services) than run and rely on my own nextcloud.
In addition, backing up the services isn't that costly these days. Backblaze provides massive storage space at cheap rates and integrates well with encrypted backup software like Duplicity, Borg or Restic. Recovery from failure is usually a breeze with these software.
Running your own email server is a massive pain and horribly unreliable.
Could you approximately predict how many hours a month not very IT-knowledgeable person will spend trying to resolve different issues with this setup?