I think I'm the target market for this - I run my own cloud on a personal server in my closet. I've been thinking of replacing it with something more compact, so Helm looks great. However, I would never buy this considering the mandatory $99 subscription service. It's too expensive for what it provides, the device price isn't properly subsidized to make up for the high subscription cost, and I might not even want to self-host mail but do want the other services.
Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
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Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#102Dockerized Nextcloud + Postfix + Dovecot + Strongswan + OpenLDAP + SpamAssassin running on an ARM machine. Sounds mostly alright, although it seems you cannot buy it without the $99/yearly subscription, which makes me wary. Sure, a static IP and domain registration is good, but it ought to be an optional addon.
Hi there - co-founder/CEO of Helm here. We don't make the subscription optional at this time because the overwhelming majority of people on the Internet do not have a static IP address with a corresponding PTR record, which is required if you want to have deliverable email. There are other ways to handle domain registration, DNS and backups on your own, but we believe the subscription is a pretty great value for the…
Could you offer both?
It’s a cool product but I just don’t see the need for a proprietary middle-person.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#103Many people here, including myself, are heavily turned off by the mandatory subscription that costs as much for 2 years as an entire device.
However, the service provided as part of the subscription, a static IP address forwarding to your device without terminating the TLS connection is actually cool. For about 30$/year (24$ sounds good), I'd absolutely buy that alone, since that's the key to the tag line - truly private e-mail.
I can build a home server myself (and in fact already have, with more features, though not nearly as elegant as a Helm). I'd be just fine with someone else running that service.
Hardware wise, besides the storage, Helm looks like a great little home server, especially for the (hopefully not subscription-subsidized ...) price. If it had slots for my own drives I'd seriously consider buying one. The yocto-based software is a bit of a downside, as I'd prefer something like a Debian for maintenance reasons, but setting that up manually would sure be possible.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#104Seems pretty cool. A little pricey and maybe even overpowered. The biggest thing that holds me back from hosting my own server is probably lack of static IP and the time/cognitive overhead of maintenance/security.
I use https://hoppy.network/ for a static IP via WireGuard for $8/month. And https://mailinabox.email/ has made email administration super simple.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#105Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#106It's a little odd that the whole premise is own your data and then when you go to order and there's a recurring subscription fee that you can't opt out of
I guess if the data is on your helm on your home, and you can access it from your home after cutting your internet, then you do own what's on your helm.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can see elsewhere where I discuss what the subscription provides. I think there's a huge difference between subscribing to companies that share customer values around privacy and security vs being at the mercy of companies looking to extract as much value from your data as possible.
OK, thanks for your reply. JFYI It's not what you think that will make or break your business; it's what your potential customers think, that matters.
If people are lumping in all tech companies in with big tech, we should all be concerned about that.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#108From [1]: > Does Helm have access to my emails? > The architecture of the system has been designed so that it's not possible for Helm to access your emails. Email senders now support sending emails over an encrypted SSL/TLS channel where the email is only decrypted once it reaches your personal email server. Helm is not able to decode these emails because we don't have access to the encryption key. In the limited sit…
Realistically email is one hop from the sender's MTA to the receiver's.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#109It's a little odd that the whole premise is own your data and then when you go to order and there's a recurring subscription fee that you can't opt out of
I guess if the data is on your helm on your home, and you can access it from your home after cutting your internet, then you do own what's on your helm.
Yes, and you can. All services are available on the LAN on standard ports, even if the Helm server is not connected to the internet.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's honestly a red flag.
A red flag for what? I would like to understand this better.
Company integrity/actually wanting to empower users. This unreasonably forces dependency on the company and bricks the device once support inevitably ends. That's usually a pretty good indication for a user-hostile company.