How did everyone discover Cloudron?

[marcusquinn]

I'm thinking knowing this can help build the community and customers, that ultimately invest in a platform we all seem to enjoy. Likes & reviews on these places could help.

I'll start, quite an easy one and common I'm sure: https://alternativeto.net/software/cloudron/

Previously tried Cloudways, Runcloud, D2C.io, all pretty good - but Cloudron just spoke to me for the low entry point for personal use, large variety of apps we already use and were setup with more complex K8S and multi-server/provider setups.

Just made complete sense to consolidate a lot of that and optimise for single-server setups with a more accessible admin interface that didn't require high-level dev-ops in-house for the more common needs of any open-source-first and privacy-conscious people or team.

I try to @mention Cloudron regularly on Twitter too on comments on other large open source account tweets for a bit more interest from those likely to find the same satisfying time-saving I'm here for.

[yusf]

I'm not sure. It may have been through AlternativeTo. At the time I was constantly evaluating self-hosting platforms such as ArkOS, Sandstorm, Yunohost and the likes. When I needed to graduate from Raspberry Pi home hosting Cloudron made the most sense as it was the only open source platform with a central user base that actually worked. Been on it since, still recommend it to people.

[murgero]

I was looking for a proper server solution to something like DietPi (I, too, am a RPi enthusiast.) When I started hosting my own stuff and moving off Digital Ocean I found Cloudron and it really appealed to me. Being able to just click an app and go is really just a life saver as I don't have real time to manage it otherwise.

[d19dotca]

I can't remember if it was on AlternativeTo or YCombinator or Reddit. All I remember is I had been doing much of what Cloudron was doing but manually, minus things like SSO and stuff across the apps in Docker which I sometimes managed with Portainer too. And after a year or so of managing it manually and wanting to find a better way to central administer everything, I was looking for something more comprehensive to save time, and had found the likes of Yunohost and others and liked the idea of Yunohost and so continued to dig into alternatives and such and that's when I came across Cloudron.

And I'm happy I chose Cloudron as the sort of platform management tool because the amount of time Cloudron has saved me is crazy, and as a result I believe Cloudron easily pays for itself in time saved. With it's SSO feature in particular it's made things much easier to manage for me given the number of apps deployed and everything, it was always a pain managing that stuff manually before when everything had it's own unique credentials.

[marcusquinn]

There you go @girish & @nebulon - some good soundbites in there for testimonial quotes

[subven]

Was actually kinda hard to find Cloudron. I was looking for ways to work with Softaculous and stumbled over Cloudron while surfing reddit.com/r/selfhosted ^^ I was even more surprised that I never heard about Cloudron because I live in Germany, work in IT and do a lot of administration and automation with Docker and Ansible.

Because Cloudron is a very small "company", their marketing and leads generation capabilities are limited. Now that the product is mature and easily scalable, something more should be done in this direction.

[marcusquinn]

@subven Nice, as Elon Musk knows with Tesla, the best marketing is the product itself, they don't advertise so all resources go into what they offer. I think the best marketing for Cloudron is this community, hence I like to see what I can do with reviews, star-ratings, Tweets etc. More people can easily own their data the better IMHO.

[Lonkle]

I'll definitely be writing about Cloudron very positively based on such quick and intelligent responses from the staff and the product as a whole being wonderfully designed. I love working with it. ️

[marcusquinn]

@Lonk And one of the most open developments I've had the pleasure of working with. Features are considered, debated and implemented.

Bugs are worked through calmly in collaboration and support for other people's apps and problems is as good as for the platform itself, with equal treatment to technical and non-technical users. Certainly a deserving happy place in my setup.

[Lonkle]

Yeah, and this NodeBB platform is actually a pleasure to use (on Desktop at least) for us to follow and discuss only the topics / categories we choose. The staff / developers (the two of them?) are very involved which makes for a great community. ️

[girish]

We are going to steal many of the comments in this thread for our testimonials Thanks for all the nice words!

[meaculpa]

I discovered Cloudron through my hosting provider Netcup. I tried the free version, was very pleased with the ease of use for setting up domains, subdomains and especially email (which was a lot of headache when I tried setting up on my own). Went back to self-managing my server... then purchased Cloudron premium when I was sick of wasting so much of my (free) time when setting up projects for friends. Now I'm happy ever since :-)! The killer feature for me is the external backup. So quick and easy to set up! Big thank you to the team and the maintainers!

[rmdes]

I was a big fan of Yunohost (still am for personal use) and with @ruihildt we were looking for a more stable/professional approach to self hosting, the moment my friend Rui found cloudron I was instantly interested, we launched a pro-bono consulting non-profit business based on cloudron for little organisations & non profits (we still run it) and since then I have moved 2 decades of web presence, different domains, different needs back to our cloudron and I'm not ever going back to shared-hosting neither for personal or professional reasons if I can avoid it !

I learned so much with cloudron now I can't stop sharing it on the fediverse, but also to entrepreneurs, startups, schools, anything that wants to reclaim their hosting power and still have a very friendly solution to handle a lot of tedious things that Cloudron turned into a huge facility to operate and for that I'm eternally grateful for Cloudron and its community !

[marcusquinn]

I feel like Cloudron's strap-line should be: "For an appy private life."

[plusone-nick]

About 5 years ago A friend showed me the Awesome Self Hosted list: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted & I went down the rabbit hole +1

[robi]

I was always hosting my own things since the first linux install back in the early 90s. When I came across Sandstorm I thought it was the bees knees, but it was far from pleasant to use with all the rough security and then the project shutdown! (for a while).

I actually called up the founder since I knew of him, and had a chat about it.. he was rearranging his life as he went to work for Cloudflare.

Shortly after I found Cloudron and haven't had to look back at anything else.

I even had @girish give a presentation on the mighty Cloudron at our meetup BayLISA. It was very impressive.

SO in some small way I am responsible for infecting a bunch of BayLISA members with the Cloudron bug and run 3 different Cloudrons myself spanning hundreds of domains now. Go Cloudron.

[marcusquinn]

I just messages someone about the Cloudron forum and liked my quote on it too much not to share:

"One of the most positive and proactive communities I've joined. It's like a System Admin's therapy group "

[scooke]

@marcusquinn Nah, that sounds like what the others would use! Cloudron works too awesomely well all the time to have a light-hearted strapline. But I can't think of any other at the moment. Oh well.

[marcusquinn]

@scooke Agreed, doesn't need a strapline, was just a bit of fun.

I like that the name Cloudron reminds me of the film Tron. We're all uploaded now

[Lonkle]

I realized today that I never answered this question. It's because I was looking for a VPS panel with an OpenVPN Client. Which I'm not sure honestly exists after my research. But it sure does now! Love Cloudron sm.