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.
You’re confusing a lack of handholding with gatekeeping.
First, you’re not entirely right. you can get a ton of self hosting done with things like Synology or Home assistant, and never see the complexity. You might get owned by a botnet, but it “works.”
Self hosting securely has a steep learning curve, there’s no way around that. What you’re asking for is for someone to write programs that’ll let you skip the learning curve.
GitHub is littered with abandoned attempts at doing this. You bury your lede by mentioning “your project” at the end. It’s your project going to be another well intentioned attempt that’s eventually abandoned or causes more problems than it solves?
Basically means the user has to trust that project to do the right thing and be maintained to keep their setup secure.
That’s generally true for any end user software.