this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Would you buy "self-hosted in a box" hardware? (self.selfhosted)
submitted 2 months ago by EliRibble to c/selfhosted
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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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[–] Presi300 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

150$ is rather ambitious for what you are describing as a custom made low power server. Managing to build something... Anything commercial out of new, hell even refurbished parts that has enough horse power to run anything more than a pihole/DNS server at this price point would be a challenge and a half. If you're going refurbished/2nd hand, you're likely gonna spend half of that on just shipping the parts to you.

I believe you are vastly underestimating the price of new low end parts and vastly overestimating the capabilities and availability of old micro servers. I'd say something like this would work at a price range of around 300~400$ (and even that's ambitious imo).

And even then, that's a NICHE audience you'd be targeting. It would be people who don't wanna pay subscriptions, but also don't wanna be bothered to spend a day or 2 figuring out how to set up a simple linux box on an old computer they have. I'm not saying that audience doesn't exist, it's just veeeeery niche.

[–] EliRibble 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, yeah, there's a lot of work for us to do in testing hardware and understanding what a common workload (if such a thing exists) would need.

Do you have any particular evidence that causes you to think the audience would be niche or wouldn't want to pay subscriptions? I can understand if this is just an opinion you hold, but if there's data or experience behind it, that would be good to know.

[–] JustAnotherKay 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anecdotally, the majority of people I've seen who self host are doing it to replace subscription services. This ranges anywhere from piracy to libre office. So, they're not gonna pay you a subscription for something they can do themselves.

The audience is niche because you're aiming at a subset of a subset of a subset of people. You're looking to sell this to someone who:

  1. Doesn't want to pay for a service they can do by themself (self-hosters)
  2. Has the knowledge and desire to handle networking (no amount of preconfiguration will make them not have to set up which ports their services need while allowing freedom)
  3. But doesn't have the time/energy to do it themself
  4. Can afford to shell out a rather large amount of money ($150 is a lot to many people, and as the other person brought up; you'll likely end up selling it for much more than this after manufacturing costs)
  5. For a piece of equipment that is eclipsed by a 3 year old desktop computer from eBay

The amount of people who self host anything is already abysmally low - just look at the social media user count. There are more than twice as many people on r/pathofexile (which is already pretty niche) as on r/selfhosted. Obviously reddit isn't the end-all be-all of representation in that way, but you can definitely get an idea of trends from it.

[–] k4j8 3 points 2 months ago

Well put. On top of the 5 points about the target audience above, in order to make a sale they also have to:

  • Have heard of the product
  • Decide to buy it (many will research competitive products)
  • Spend the time to actually place the order
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