Hi all, 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 here’s the question: Is gatekeeping slowing down the adoption of self-hosting?
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 everyone:
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people who want full control and custom setups,
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people who want semi-manual but guided,
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and 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?
My project focuses on building a tool that makes self-hosting more accessible without sacrificing data ownership, so I genuinely want your honest take before releasing it more widely.
Not at all. In fact I remember the day my server was hacked because I’d left a service running that had a vulnerability in it. I remember changing passwords, calling my bank to ensure there had been no fraudulent charges, etc. I remember “war driving” to find vulnerable WiFi networks. I remember changing default passwords on a service setup by a client of mine.
As I said - it’s not gate-keeping it’s experience.
Teaching is “gate-keeping” apparently. You can’t tell somebody that they need to learn something! You just need to give them a link to a url and say “run this thing as root and your stuff will work - totally not a scam tho”.
Was this server on an internal network?