Who is selling hosted (and supported) Cloudron servers?

[jdaviescoates]

Let's list them here.

I think there are likely quite a few people out there doing this, but I'm not really aware of many.

I know of https://osinum.fr/ in France, but I'm guessing @staff know of quite a few similar opeations?

https://autonomic.zone/ were offering it too, but I'm not sure they do anymore now that Cloudron is no longer open source.

@d19dotca @yusf you provide hosted Cloudron stuff to clients too, right? (but I think you don't actively advertise his?)

And from what I can gather @marcusquinn is cooking up some ideas in this area too, right?

I'm working with @thetomester13 to set-up https://selfhost.cloud and so want to do a bit of market research about what is currently out there, how they market the offering and what their pricing is like.

Would also like to perhaps start the beginning of a little Cloudron resellers peer support community (I guess in some ways this forum is already that, but I'm thinking perhaps regular video calls to touch base and share thoughts/ best practice etc)

Thanks!

[vjvanjungg]

what a synchronicity i’ve been thinking about this lately. some ideas are brimming in my mind, just not sure about the implementation .. yet. would love to hear/appreciate any of your experience.

[d19dotca]

@jdaviescoates Great idea! I'd definitely love to be a part of something like that.

What I do:
I do freelance web & tech services as a side business, and that includes hosting a bunch of things for customers which I do on Cloudron. Specifically WordPress websites for roughly 15 clients, and recently even some SFTP servers for one client too. Also a nodeBB forum for a client, Bitwarden password manager, email hosting of course, webmail apps, all that jazz. WordPress and email is the vast majority of what I host for my clients, but I get to dabble in other areas too which I like. Oh and web analytics too of course as that's bundled with my web hosting plan I sell to them, and to my surprise many of them actually really like seeing the emailed report from Matomo where they see all the results from each city, country, dates and times of busy traffic, etc. When I started offering it I honestly didn't think too many people would care, but most of them really like that part. I guess it sort of helps justify to them why they have a website in the first place so they can see how many people they're effectively reaching and such too in one area.

I don't necessarily market my services as a Saas-Cloudron or anything like that, just to be clear in case that's kind of what you were asking earlier, but I am very open in spreading the word of Cloudron (sounds like I'm in a cult, lol) to any of my clients that want to learn more about how I manage things, and even link to Cloudron from my website, so generally the customers that actually care to know that stuff all know I'm using Cloudron as the platform for everything.

Quick side story about the SFTP server I recently setup, just because I think it's really cool, haha:
Using Surfer, I setup an SFTP server to bridge a medical clinic (client of mine) administering COVID-19 tests and the lab they hired to actually process the tests. Before, they were emailing constantly between clinic and lab and it was a hassle for them to keep track of everything... and we later found out that the lab they contracted actually had a script which they use for their larger clients I guess - it polls the SFTP server every 5 minutes for a CSV file which the clinic fills it out and saves to the SFTP server for each patient, each patient being it's own row on the CSV. It's streamlined their entire process now - just that one thing alone - to the point where they get their results much faster now from the lab and can then forward that to the patients much quicker than before as it's way less overhead in communications between the lab and clinic. Once I heard about this and set it up for them and learned how much better it made things for them, honestly I was humbled in a way, I consider myself fortunate to have been a very very very tiny part of that process to ensure people can get their COVID-19 test results sooner. It really wasn't much work on my part at all, Cloudron made it easy to implement! It was still cool to be a part of an improvement to this essential service in my region none-the-less.

Sorry I'm rambling on now, lol, the answer to your original question is "Yes, I offer services to my clients that I host using Cloudron". haha.

[msbt]

I was trying to shift my focus on hosting (with Cloudron) the last few years but haven't got around to really fine tune everything and get the pricing down so it's a sustainable business model and also attractive for customers (attractive in the sense of presentation, explaining the thing and spreading the word).

My time is split in half, 50% employed at a company and 50% self employed, which most of the time is developing stuff which leaves only little time to get ahead in the hosting business. The websites of my clients mostly end up on one of my bigger Cloudrons, but they don't know that it is Cloudron because they only need their WordPress and sometimes Email.

You can see the current status here https://bits.at/hosting/ - but as mentioned, haven't had much time to invest there the last months so the apps section and the knowledgebase are rather outdated and the pricing needs a bump

Edit: Obivously my primary target audience would be german speaking, but I was looking forward to translate the page for the european market. But again, time being the limiting factor here

[scooke]

@jdaviescoates Do you mean selling the web service as Cloudron software, meaning, the client knows that they are paying for a Cloudron installation? Or do you mean selling webservices based on a self-hosted Cloudron? I have about 4 clients Wordpress sites hosted on my Cloudron, but none of them know how their Wordpress site is live, nor do I think they'd be interested necessarily to know about Cloudron, per se. I do have another client whose Wordpress site I've set up on a Cloudron install that will likely remain dedicate to just their site (because they may want email and chat options), so at some point I think I'll introduce them to the Cloudron backend.

Personally, I've been aiming to promote self-hosting, and totally see Cloudron as being an integral part of that to the clients I'm working with now, and and future ones. In some ways I might be losing income in that I'm trying to empower these users to eventually run with their Cloudron install on their own, but I also see that the service/maintenance/training side of things will probably still be needed.

[marcusquinn]

Not yet but planning something along these lines.

My feeling is things like Upwork are quite variable and time-consuming for qualifying freelancers, costing and pricing things, so thinking more along the lines of al-la-carte pricing that creates sustainable relationships between freelancers, teams, agencies & clients.

I'm looking at it from a slightly different point of view though, as retainers for expertise on a curated sub-set of the actual apps.

To me, the choice is nice but its for our experience to know each of the pros & cons and guide on the best selection for long-term support and ultimately make the apps invisible to getting on and using them with minimal support needs and invisible maintenance.

[marcusquinn]

In fact, I'm intending to start a thread on what I just said soon, just had a bunch of life stuff to balance.

I'm all-in on promoting Cloudron though, too much on my mind to write now but I can see a bright future, and have some interesting possibilities to bring to the party at some point. Sorry, not intending to be a mystery post, just gotta focus on a fair bit of life stuff first.