this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Selfhosted

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Would you buy "self-hosted in a box" hardware? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by EliRibble@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I'm considering a business plan for people getting in to self-hosting. Essentially I sell you a Mikrotik router and a refurbished tiny x86 server. The idea is that the router plugs in to your home internet and the server into the router. Between the two they get the server able to handle incoming requests so that you can host services on the box and address them from the broader Internet.

The hypothesis is that $150 of equipment to avoid dozens of hours of software configuration is a worthwhile trade for some customers. I realize some people want to learn particular technologies and this is a bad fit for them. I think there are people out there that want the benefit of self-hosting, and may find it worth it to buy "self-hosting in a box".

What do you think? Would this be a useful product for some people?

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago

From reading the comments, I think you could be a lot leaner by selling the $100 setup fee, and telling people which "kit" is supported, and they buy that on their own.

That way you don't have to deal with any of the physical infrastructure of buying/selling/storing hardware, and people can do some customization.

However I do think you'd need to put some restrictions in place so that people don't buy cheap crap that doesn't work and expect you to set it up and support it. They have to buy the kit or other compatible hardware.

I'm not sure what services you'd support, but personally I'd be interested in something like a personal introduction and setup of

  • docker
  • proxmox
  • yunohost
  • backups / restore (practice restoring)
  • smb shared folder
  • pihole / pivpn (can you have wire guard and openvpn setup at the same time for different uses?

Maybe migration of

  • nextcloud

You could make different prices depending on what service they want, kind of like a bike stop.

I wouldn't want a perpetual subscription, but I could stomach something like $100 setup + $5/mo for limited support for a year.

Best thing for me is that community support also exists for all these things too, but it's hard to do it on your own sometimes.