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:

  • people who want full control and custom setups,

  • people who want semi-manual but guided,

  • 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.

  • LordKitsuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    There is literally a thread somewhere on my Lemmy I need to try and find just recently that shows this perfectly. Someone made a thread asking how they can self host their images for backup from their phone and naturally everyone pointed them to immich. And they immediately started complaining and bitching that they could not access it from outside their local network. Instead of asking how to fix that they were like what the hell is the point if I have to be on the same Wi-Fi this is stupid. And they basically did not want to engage with the people being like hey you need to either make a reverse proxy or open a port on your router. They should not be self hosting