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Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

selfhostedsource.tech

41–50 of 114 posts

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#41
post #19

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of…

Please give Cloudron (https://cloudron.io) a try. We provide a solution that makes it easy to self-host apps. We provide Ghost, Rainloop, Nextcloud, InvoiceNinja, GitLab, Rocket.Chat among other apps. Full list here - https://cloudron.io/store/index.html

Disclaimer: I am the co-founder

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#42
post #19

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of…

https://bitnami.com/stacks helps quite a bit (disclaimer, I am the cofounder)

Seconding Bitnami - I didn't have time to learn Ruby, read through configuration files, search old forums for slightly-obsolete guides, and get familiar with all the tech behind Redmine. Downloaded the installer from Bitnami to my local server, clicked through - boom, done.

Thanks for the effort you put into simplifying the use of all those applications!

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#43
My company (cloudron.io) provides an App Store for self-hosted apps. We have an app store listing page which has the description and screenshots of each app. https://cloudron.io/store/index.html if you want to take a look. But we have this only for apps that we have packaged/maintain.

That said, the layout of your site is very nice! How does one get new projects added to the list? (For example, we would like to have Cloudron itself listed there).

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#45
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar work between gigs a couple years back. There is absolutely a customer base for such things. But they don't have tech budgets - even pricing our services fairly cheaply, they would balk at the cost. So there may be a business opportunity, but you need enough scale that each single customer is happy with the price.

Maybe it's particular to my local culture (Berlin), but many people I talked to said they would pay a premium to support a small business and to acquire independence and privacy. They're not technical, but they understand the ramifications of these things. Not sure if this culture is everywhere, but my gut feeling is that in Berlin it's big enough.

My understanding is that German mass culture has a much better understanding of the value of privacy because of the relatively recent history around the SS and the Stasi. Many German citizens really feel the risk of not having personal privacy in a way that people in other countries don't.

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#46

Website constantly times out for me, stuff doesn't load etc. Not sure if that's because of traffic due to this post or not.

For me, on all search results, only the first page loads. Second page is an empty document: https://selfhostedsource.tech/self-hosted/?page=2&search=web (Not sure if a bug or due to load.)

Bug. It should be fixed now. Sorry about that.

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#47
post #19

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of…

There is definitely a market, but I'd say it's a difficult nut to crack. You first want to do a quick cost-benefit-analysis first to make sure you're making an informed decision.

We won't be factoring privacy, working with a big company, or other concerns in this thought. We will only focus on the numbers.

Lets look at email/productivity market real quick.

Google's base package is 6 dollars a month per user with all the backups, support, and infrastructure in place (realistically, you'll want the 12 dollars a month package).

Since email is critical infrastructure (I believe it's one of the most critical elements of a business), lets say two DigitalOcean VPSes at 6 dollars a month each (one primary, one failover) with a license of HostinaBox/Vesta/Whatever Open Source Solution you use with DigitalOcean's backups enabled. Not the "best" design but something I'd say is OK and within scope for a small business. That's 12 dollars a month base costs + your consulting time for a sizeable capacity.

For a small business of 1 person, they get a better deal by just going with Google. Google has their applications and softwares easily integrated with their other services, comes with their productivity suite (GSuite == Google Docs, Drive, etc.), and as a small business who is probably risk adverse in their decisions when it comes to these things, feel more comfortable working with Google.

For a small business of 5 people, I'd say it's still more worth it for them to use Google as that's 30 dollars a month (most consultants charge more than that an hour). If they hire a consultant and if the poo hits the fan, then they'll be paying a consultant money to execute the disaster recovery plan. Even if you did take them on as a client, that's a maximum of 18 dollars a month you get to keep (assuming no issues/errors happen).

For a small business of 50 people, then now it gets to an interesting territory. However, for 50 people I'd change up the base server/system configuration to have higher capacity, more fault tolerant, and resilient under disaster scenarios (which would increase base operating costs).

I'd say this really depends on marginal benefits and based really on relationships established with your clients. In the end, you can probably make some $$$ but your time and effort might be spent on more productive and lucritive tasks. This is also assuming that the self-hosted OSS software is of quality that the clients will be happy with. I'd argue Google's mail offering may have annoying/restrictive spam policies and be frustrating at times, but they have a high quality product made at an affordable price point. The variation in quality of OSS products concerns me as well as developers who are probably overworked and underpaid for their contributions asked to make changes to support clients they're not directly paid by.

As a risk averse business, I'd rather rest my eggs in the Google/Microsoft/whoever basket and directly work with the "entity" that maintains the codebase (or has the talent/expertise on-hand to make adjustments) rather than a middle intermediary of equal level but, in the end, is subject to the decisions and leadership of the OSS product.

Now take this to another step and say you build a consulting company that handles all of these as a one-stop-shop? Well... Then I don't see anything new service/model here than what a local IT consultant company can offer.

So to really make this work I'd say a shop that automates these deployments on-demand and offers a large selection of applications to use is probably the best step forward. Even then, I don't really see the viability of this on a funding perspective except for scaling. In the end in my perspective, the opportunity is there but it'd be hard to do it right. Also funding the developers of the software you're making money off of would be great, but that's a whole nother thing (and I can squabble about that for hours).

Quick plug: two very good friends of mine are in the process of tackling a similar issue via their venture[0]. I am a customer of theirs but have been friends with them even before this venture. Really recommend their product as an affordable and reliable product that "just works".

[0]: https://mxroute.com/

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#48
post #19

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of…

https://bitnami.com/stacks helps quite a bit (disclaimer, I am the cofounder)

Question to people with better knowledge of English than me (or lawyers): what is the difference between disclaimer and disclosure? To me “I am a co-founder” sounds like a disclosure (of vested interest) and disclaimer would be something like “I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This is not a legal advice”

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#49
post #19

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of…

A few of us are trying to get development moving again on Sandstorm.io. It's a super handy (and default-extremely-secure) piece of software, it just needs a little nudge of developer interest. It's original target was the enterprise space, but it's an awesome self-hosting platform for privacy nerds too. The OSS is out there, but you've gotta wrap it in enough design work to make the experience comparable to closed so…

Came to the comments to lament Sandstorm's demise. Glad y'all are looking to keep it moving!

Re: Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar work between gigs a couple years back. There is absolutely a customer base for such things. But they don't have tech budgets - even pricing our services fairly cheaply, they would balk at the cost. So there may be a business opportunity, but you need enough scale that each single customer is happy with the price.

Yep. I wanted to do this with websites for mom & pop operations, but why would they pay me when they can get their nephew to set up Squarespace for them at $10/month? I believe there is a niche to be served here, just not sure exactly how yet.

Axé! I also think there is a niche but the key here is to make it as simple, low-friction, and support-free as possible. Supporting a very diverse range of small businesses might be more expensive than what they pay.
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