Umbrel – Personal Cloud

A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you really have to over-communicate what happens if Umbrel-the-company disappears or changes direction: how do I keep using this thing in 5–10 years without your cloud, your app store, your updates?

The interesting opportunity here isn’t selling a fancy N100 box, it’s turning “self-hosted everything” into something your non-technical friend could actually live with. That’s mostly about boring stuff: automatic off-site backup that isn’t tied to one vendor, painless replacement/restore if the hardware dies, and clear guarantees about what runs locally vs phoning home. If Umbrel leans into being forkable and portable across generic hardware, it has a shot at being trusted infrastructure instead of just another pretty NAS that people regret once the marketing site goes dark.

I am uninterested in purchasing proprietary hardware running a proprietary operating system that'll work (maybe) for some amount of time. Sure, it's technically self hosted. But you can't extend it (without their proprietary app store). It doesn't seem like you can write your own apps without registering, or side load them. Details are extremely thin on the site, so let me know if I'm wrong.

Hell, all the compelling software isn't even theirs! They're just running other OSS apps, and god knows whether you'll be able to manage or upgrade it.

Arguably, this is the worst of all worlds: you're paying the overhead of closed hardware, running closed software that you don't control, and sort of just crossing your fingers that they don't pull the rug out from underneath you. You'd be infinitely better off buying a comparable NUC and spending an afternoon loading up Docker on it. Shit like this is genuinely insulting to the demographic of folks who should be the target audience.

Looks like they're selling an N150 based "Mini PC" for $500.

You can get a very similar 16GB RAM, 1TB storage Minipc in the same form factor from Amazon for around $260 so looks like you're paying almost twice the price for the NAS-type software?

> Store your files

On a non-backup "Personal Cloud" that does not even have a RAID 1 for a bit of redundancy? Big no no.

It looks really cool, but I really dislike products that encourage dangerous behaviors, especially to users that might completely be unaware and think about replacing their Apple or Google Cloud with this so called "personal cloud".

I like Umbrel’s technical approach: Its apps are just docker compose files with a little extra, making it very easy to support. The UI layer is Next JS, which gives tight coupling with the backend (so good state sync).

I also like their marketing approach: They really have a nice app store and a nice page for each app.

I did not like the reliability around app installations and the disappointment that it’s actually quite proprietary.

I wish there was a standard „server app“ format similar to what Umbrel uses with a strong ecosystem and multiple solutions. It‘s a key missing piece to self hosting stuff, IMO.

This is hard, because on one hand I do love self-hosting (I self-host a number of the services they list in their "App Store") but I don't quite get the target market for this (probably because I'm not in it).

The lack of RAID or similar means that you've traded the cloud for 1 component losing all your data. Coupled with the lack of any (obvious) backup solution is concerning. Do you really want to backup your files/images to a single point of failure? If this is supposed to be turn-key then I think there are opportunities to sell cloud backup as an add-on but as-is you are handing people a ticking time bomb.

I'm not a fan of the Crypto angle highlighted in the store, it's a red flag.

I'm interested in what the app compatibility story is here. Like how much post-install configuration are they handling?

> Sonarr on umbrelOS will automatically connect to download clients installed from the Umbrel App Store. Choose from Transmission, qBittorerent, and SABnzbd. Simply install your preferred client(s).

Does that mean they have post-install hooks (on both Sonarr and the download client's end) to configure those? Or is that just speak for "Yeah, you can easily configure XYZ download client that you also installed".

All-in-all it seems overpriced and limited for what it's offering and that's all assuming they stick around and don't peter out. Maybe this is a good first step for someone interested in this but I feel like the type of person interested in this either already can figure out how to set it up themselves (Synology, UnRaid, Docker, etc) or will need a lot of handholding when things break/don't work as expected.

It's entirely possible that there are a lot of people that this would be good for, I just don't know who it would be.

Lastly, no mention of anything like SSO or Remote Access (both things that could be a good value-add IMHO alongside cloud backup). It's overly nerdy in some ways and underly nerdy in others which is why I can't figure out the target audience.

This is a hard problem. Offering autonomy and ownership of data to non-techy people is HARD.

Although I'm not at all convinced Umbrel is the right answer, they seem to be on the right track. Can they empower regular people to own their data without causing havoc down the road if they run out of money and go out of business? I'm sceptical, but I do respect them for trying to tackle this head on. But having skimmed their website, they could do a better job of building trust and answer the long-term question of what happens if they fail.

I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech a way out that does not require that you are a nerd. I am only worried people can be scared it this goes wrong. Paying a premium for rather basic hardware if the setup and software is super smooth could be perfectly acceptable to non-techies that do not at all want the hassle of maintaining a custom NAS.

I want a personal cloud, but one that can be hosted in an actual cloud.

Ideally, I think we would something like Sandstorm but that can be deployed on everything from a home server to a Docker-based cloud service like Google Cloud Run or... Amazon Fargate (I'm not too familiar with their services).

I don't use the cloud for scaling, but so that I never have to worry about power, internet, or machine-level security.

So difficult but look somebody has to try. For us to make any progress we need attempts at this. Package the hardware and software, find a target demographic and go after it. I don't know if there's a mistake in going too broad or not having a tailored OS with a smaller footprint or being the general utility but we only learn through these tests. Good luck Umbrel team!

I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on Umbrel. Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally `ssh homelab "cd /opt/<homelab>/stacks/<app> && docker compose up -d"`, and I couldn't be happier to tinker to my heart's desire.

The biggest upgrade of this movement is privacy & data sovereignty, so I hope it continues growing, and hope Umbrel has success in being a gateway for a lot of selfhost-curious.

It's always good to see some movement in the self-hosted space but I'm wondering who is this for.

People like myself are all in and enjoy the technical aspects of running Proxmox/NixOS/Docker/Kubernetes on our own hardware, building the systems exactly as we like and (hopefully) with a sound backup strategy and without a dependency on a company providing an appliance-like experience.

Running services is not trivial and solutions like this help with getting started but not with the really hard aspects on how to operate services safely with little risk of data loss.

I'm wondering if this would be more accessible and safer to operate if instead of relying on users having their own hardware it would require users to bring their a VPS (removing the need of managing hardware) and object storage (for managed backups).

I'd really love to see an off the shelf distributed FS server in a NUC form factor that you plug in and is largely self-managed. Automatic atomic updates, QR codes to add a server to your swarm, manage it through a browser, client side encryption so a compromised server doesn't mean data exposure. If you want to get fancy, you could have user quotas so you and all your friends set up a single swarm with shared storage and you'd have a very distributed cloud. Optionally add a hetzner instance to the swarm.

All the concerns about umbrel being all proprietary are really about continuity and interoperability. We want a personal cloud where we can maintain continuity, and it needs to be, well, in some cloud that isn't your home, but also it needs to be replicated to your home (because again, continuity). Continuity in the face of:

- switching providers

- providers going bankrupt or being acquired by others who don't care

- account lockouts!

- switching device OSes

Open source means continuity and interoperability. Proprietary means the opposite.

Can it really run local LLMs at any decent size? I find it hard to believe for the price it can run anything more than 7b or 8b models slowly.

I must be missing something but $500 for an N150 mini PC pre-loaded with a 4tb nas and a custom OS is a terrible value proposition. And I have multiple form factor N1xx based machines running 24/7, so this is the exact type of thing I would be interested in. Could it have been priced in a more compelling manner without the NVME?

I would say if you're going to charge a pretty penny for the box, you have to make it ridiculously seamless to run every app the way a user wants, without issue.

TrueNAS sort of half-accomplishes this but as soon as you have to start configuring Redis and Postgres parameters to install Immich or understanding how to set permission on every layer of the filesystem so you can SMB share, the idea of a normal person being able to do this goes completely out the window.

My advice is to go ahead and just open-source everything. You won't on being closed-source anyway. You'll win on the experience for nontechnical users (or tehcnical users that don't want to spend time fiddling). You'll stomp out these complaints on Reddit and HackerNews so people don't get a bunch of negative comments when they google your company.

There's room for innovation in this space, but making a viable business here will be hard.

The enthusiast market is so wrapped up in Home Assistant and existing NAS boxes that you would need a killer app to aim first for more normie use. It looks like they tried being a crypto node at home solution and are now pivoting to be more general.

if you don't have your data when you don't have access to third parties you don't own your data.

we should start switching to solutions like this to keep control and freedom

you can find their opensource repos here: https://github.com/getumbrel

Downtime and backups is why I don't take self-hosted more seriously. If I could easily be up and running after a hardware failure or software upgrade failure, I would pay for that in a heartbeat and ditch the comparable SaaS.

As for now, I run Immich but keep Google photos around as I'm afraid to upgrade it and don't have confidence on restoring it if my server dies. See how long and full of warning messages their backup and restore page is https://docs.immich.app/administration/backup-and-restore/.

This looks really well done. The software is both well-designed (from UX / UI pov) AND it's OSS AND it's just an SSD / NAS underneath it all, I think this kind of thing is a welcome addition to the market.

Hmmm this doesn't look bad at all. The linked page doesn't make it too clear but apparently you can install it yourself for free, you don't have to buy their hardware.

It's not something I'd go for to be honest. I need to have full tinker access :) Most of my servers now have a bunch of custom docker scripts. But it looks good I have to say.

I think I'll roll this out in a VM on my homelab just to play with it and get some ideas.

PS: One thing that's notably missing in their app store is headscale, the only have the official Tailscale service client.

Ok, and what do I do when these guys go out of business/get bought by Amazon/microsoft/whatever in 3 or 5 years? Like, the game’s up with this cloud stuff, surely. None of it is to be trusted.

The self-hosted is interesting but the real challenge is the long-term commitment. What happens when: - The hardware fails - The company pivots or shuts down - You need to restore from backup

I'd love to see more focus on data portability and guaranteed migration paths. If the OS is truly open, that helps, but the "appliance" model makes people nervous about vendor lock-in even when self-hosting.

IF I already have a NAS/mini pc can I just install this stuff and get all the benefits because I don't need the hardware?

I run an umbrel on an off the shelf mini pc and it’s been great! Very polished and nice experience!

Or get the same specs with Beelink for $300? This is a mini PC with Linux pre-installed.

Why would anyone want this? It's got a fairly tiny drive size for this day and age, not to mention it appears to just be a generic aliexpress N150 box thats been branded and had their software pre-installed.

Picked up an Umbrel server to run Bitcoin Knots node last month. Works extremely well, I highly recommend it for similar applications. Nice web based UI.

"run a Bitcoin node" <closes tab>

Cool, but honestly I always end up regretting another device that is not just plain "non user-firendly" Linux. First you buy Synology because it's just quick and easy to set-up, and "I'll figure the rest later". But when time comes to figure the rest out, it's just so unreasonably inconvenient. In theory, it is just Linux, and DSM is just for convenience, and there are special packages intended to use Docker and install stuff and all, but there are so many "user-friendly improvements" on top of that, that I get tired even just thinking about all the hoops I have to jump to do something super-simple and end up choosing some another device for all tasks that theoretically would be a good fit for my NAS to perform. The only good thing is hot-swap and automatic volume rebuild, that is super convenient. But, honestly, are these 2 minutes of convenience worth the rest? I don't know.

Like frigghome.ai I do not see much interest in these, but they could be an interesting way to bring a homeserver per home, potentially powering a public blockchain for digital identity, (smart)contracts hashed publicly, and a digital currency not owned by anyone in particular with also Liquid Feedback blockchain to construct a new society.

The road is very long, but technically feasible, obviously I expect ferocious push against...

Seems to be a hardware + software thing.

Last time I looked at it it had some craptocurrecy stuff, which lost me as a user.

> Store your files, download and stream media, run a Bitcoin node, and more — all in your home.

Run a Bitcoin node? No, thanks, I don’t want my files anywhere near a crypto bro cloud box.

was the market for this birthed by synology when they insisted on synology certified drives?

moment I read personal cloud, how is fail over supported... probably dumb question I assume.

So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up...

Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.

Hacker x

SSH is my "personal cloud"...