Cloudron Forum

@scooke Just chill man. @eddowding is not alone in thinking that way.

Nobody has said that Cloudron would fail.

We are just business owners that have hope that Cloudron become bigger and add more business-oriented apps. We want their success and we are here to encourage them to pursuit that path.

If they speak out loud and simply tell us they are not interested to grow that much, fine. We'll respect their decisions.

But if they are, they have a big community behind them that is ready to continue submitting feedback and even agreed to pay an extra (if required) on their subscriptions to allow the Cloudron team to expand and add more business apps.

I have no idea why some people here try to defend Cloudron due to that post?! This is everything but negative.

I initially created this post to show my interest in having more business apps and many others agreed with me. This simply means that the interests are shared among multiple users and that my feedback should be considered seriously.

To those who are not interested, why are you losing your time posting here? I'm just not getting the point. Cloudron has many different audiences from businesses to personal. If you are not targeted by this, just move on.

@timconsidine Yes you have a good point and I agree with you 100%. Those were interesting platforms I have seen trending on Github that I like and keep an eye on... you're right tho, it may be better to wait until they release their v1 before adding them to Cloudron.

But the main point is still valid. We need a better voting system... If you decline an app, please tell us at least the reason why you can't add it to Cloudron. If we know the reason, we may come back with a solution, or reach out to the developers of the project and see if they can improve their docker template to make it compatible with Cloudron.

More transparency would be nice! Also, if you could post a roadmap on what is planned that would be great. Many SaaS now have a public roadmap where we can see what's planned and their current states like:

1. Consideration
2. Planned
3. In development
   etc...

I think these changes would be highly appreciated by the Cloudron community.

@scooke They are new (~1yr old) but have you seen how fast they are growing? Twenty is now the most-starred CRM project on Github with 24k stars. They have almost 400 contributors and release new features and fixes at a crazy speed. I tested it on a VPS and it's surprisingly stable considering its maturity. I would use it for my business without worrying.

I haven't tested Plane but the reviews on Reddit are good.

It's not because the product is new that it's not a good product. Old mentality.

@micmc Yeah, I am already using n8n and have tons of stuff automated with it and I love it! You're right it's very powerful and can do mostly all I recommended. I mentioned a few big names upvoted a lot in the forum. Personally for my business, the two things I want the most are Twenty CRM and Plane.

I tried Directus but it's not like budibase or appsmith.. It's more a database management tool with an interface. You can't build apps. A good use case for Budibase or Appsmith was to create a frontend for n8n and start workflows via webhooks.

In n8n self-hosted edition, you can't share your workflows with other users so that's how a frontend UI is handy and why I believe Budibase would be very helpful.

And yeah I agree with you about the potential for Cloudron to revolutionize the self-hosting industry... The technology is so amazing... I just have doubts about their motivation to scale it. I feel they are good in their current state and don't want to become a bigger company. Cloudron has definitely the potential to become a 9-figure company.

They never produced any form of content marketing... Look at Semrush or Ahrefs, NADA. They also have zero paid ads running.

This means they built their user base ONLY on word of mouth (Which is amazing btw! This proves how good the product is). Imagine if they would start investing in marketing... This would FLY! They should hire a marketer to help them... there are so much potential.

@timconsidine said in Focus on Business Apps:

p should be the focus of packaging effort ?

Hi Tim,

I think we (Cloudron users) may have many different business types, so our needs may be different. You already have some good foundation apps and it's a great start!

An application that I think everyone will agree with me, that is part of any online business nowadays is a CRM. I think the most promising CRM right now are Twenty and ERPNext. I know you have already Dolibarr and Espo CRM but those are a bit outdated and lack modern features. For me, the most promising is Twenty CRM but I know ERPNext is a big favorite in the self-hosted community.

But IMHO where Cloudron is lacking the most right now is in innovative solutions that can have a BIG IMPACT on businesses. I'm making reference to AI-related platforms. AI is currently changing the world and as a business owner, we can't ignore it... We need to start integrating it into our processes ASAP. A few platforms are Langflow, Flowise, Autogen & Crew AI.

And to conclude, more no-code/low-code platforms such as Budibase or Appsmith.

Agentic, No-code/Low-code, and more CRMs. Those are the kind of apps that can truly helps a business to scale and that would be amazing to see Cloudron supporting these apps soon.

To conclude, I would like also to mention Plane as a new innovative self-hosted project management tool that has a lot of potential. For a business, project management tools are expensive and the options offered right now are a bit outdated.

This goes to MY OPINION. Some will agree with my priorities, some may have different ones. I think this is why this is very important to have a better voting system so we can figure out the real interests as the current way to vote is not convenient and hard to keep track of it.

Btw, thanks for taking the time to read our feedback... This thread wasn't meant to talk bad about Cloudron. We love Cloudron and support you 100% guys. I would just like to see Cloudron supporting more business users. As a business, it's hard to scale as subscriptions continue to go up (Currently paying ~2k/m in subscriptions) and I'm at a point in my business where I need to find a way to minimize my costs, and this is why I fall in love with Cloudron and don't bother paying more for a subscription if it can help me save hundreds of dollars in subscriptions monthly.

For those that are reading this post... If you plan to host the docker image yourself, this is critical to update the JSON of Docker Registry app with your Cloudron registry domain and credentials.

@nebulon Maybe that would be a great idea to add to the documentation that if a user wants to host the image himself, he should use his Cloudron docker registry domain instead of docker.io. The documentation is currently confusing ^^

Thanks again for your assistance.

@nebulon I tried disabling proxy on the build and registry app... and I'm still getting the "413 Request Entity Too Large" error

How it's possible if both apps have proxying disabled? Is it because my.mydomain.com (Cloudron) is proxyfied?

@nebulon When we push the image to the Docker registry app, here is what the build app logs are saying:

Nov 27 10:21:23 Application Build Service Worker
Nov 27 10:21:23 Build Id: build-1732720882415
Nov 27 10:21:23 Build logfile: /tmp/build-1732720882415.log
Nov 27 10:21:23 Docker Username: *********
Nov 27 10:21:23 Dockerfile Name: Dockerfile
Nov 27 10:21:23 Image Repo: registry.//app
Nov 27 10:21:23 Image Tag: 20241127-152056-15345a770
Nov 27 10:21:23 Push: true
Nov 27 10:21:23 Source Archive: /tmp/OtULoDB64vB7KxXP8npFeXVT.gz
Nov 27 10:21:23 Use cache: true
Nov 27 10:21:23 build-1732720882415 Building...
Nov 27 10:21:23 build-1732720882415 docker build -t registry.//app:20241127-152056-15345a770 (Dockerfile)
Nov 27 10:21:26 build-1732720882415 Build stream finished
Nov 27 10:21:26 build-1732720882415 Pushing...
Nov 27 10:25:29 2024-11-27T15:25:29Z
Nov 27 10:25:29 </body>
Nov 27 10:25:29 </html>
Nov 27 10:25:29 <body>
Nov 27 10:25:29 <center><h1>413 Request Entity Too Large</h1></center>
Nov 27 10:25:29 <head><title>413 Request Entity Too Large</title></head>
Nov 27 10:25:29 <hr><center>cloudflare</center>
Nov 27 10:25:29 Build build-1732719728695 failed during image pushing.
Nov 27 10:25:29 build-1732719728695 Push failed
Nov 27 10:25:29 build-1732719728695 Push stream finished
Nov 27 10:25:29 build-1732719728695 unknown: <html>
Nov 27 10:34:59 startLogStream: client closed
Nov 27 10:34:59 startLogStream: finished with undefined
Nov 27 10:44:22 2024-11-27T15:44:22Z
Nov 27 10:44:22 </body>
Nov 27 10:44:22 </html>
Nov 27 10:44:22 <body>
Nov 27 10:44:22 <center><h1>413 Request Entity Too Large</h1></center>
Nov 27 10:44:22 <head><title>413 Request Entity Too Large</title></head>
Nov 27 10:44:22 <hr><center>cloudflare</center>
Nov 27 10:44:22 Build build-1732720882415 failed during image pushing.
Nov 27 10:44:22 build-1732720882415 Push failed
Nov 27 10:44:22 build-1732720882415 Push stream finished
Nov 27 10:44:22 build-1732720882415 unknown: <HTML>

The build and docker registry app are on the same Cloudron server. I just saw for Cloudflare in logs.. currently proxy is disabled for registry but not for build. Do you think it could be related?

@girish I have this problem currently. How to fix it on the latest version of Docker Registry?

@nebulon by using our Cloudron credentials and setting our registry URL in the JSON file, it works! However, now we get this error message:

"413 Request Entity Too Large"

Our image make 6.47GB.

@nebulon I tried to log in to Docker via the terminal of the build app, and have been able to log in using the web browser one-time code but when it tried to save the credential, we got the read-only issue.

@nebulon Just jump into the conversation as @Daniel-Lobo is my dev. I installed Cloudron on the server and now we are trying to add a custom app to the platform.

I see that the issue seem to be with Docker registry credentials so I logged to the server via SSH and tried to log in with the same credentials as set in our docker.json file and that worked. see below:

<logs>
root@my:~# docker login
Log in with your Docker ID or email address to push and pull images from Docker Hub. If you don't have a Docker ID, head over to https://hub.docker.com/ to create one.
You can log in with your password or a Personal Access Token (PAT). Using a limited-scope PAT grants better security and is required for organizations using SSO. Learn more at https://docs.docker.com/go/access-tokens/

Username: xxxxxx
Password:
WARNING! Your password will be stored unencrypted in /root/.docker/config.json.
Configure a credential helper to remove this warning. See
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/login/#credentials-store

Login Succeeded
</logs>

I tried to ask AI why the credentials weren't working then and it answered me the correct JSON format is the following:

{
"auths": {
"https://index.docker.io/v1/": {
"auth": "base64-encoded-username-and-password"
}
}
}

See ChatGPT chat here: https://chatgpt.com/share/6747192b-ee7c-8005-b402-79b3aac2ef2d

So at this point, is it the format recommended in the Cloudron documentation that is wrong or this format is for Cloudron only and you convert internally to correct JSON structure for docker?

@eddowding +1 for Fider. That would be a much better system for voting.

@timconsidine But the votes are just a quarter of the real problem. I don't recall who but someone from the Cloudron team clearly stated that in selecting the apps you were integrating, an important point for taking your decision was how easy it is to maintain.

The main issue that Cloudron is solving is making management for self-hosted apps easy... I just think you guys are rerouting from your main objective and it's disappointing.

With all the respect I have for the Cloudron team, I think you are not as good marketers as you are developers.

Inflation is at its highest... Businesses are trying to save on cost where they can and the open source industry is booming. You have THE SOLUTION to help millions of businesses to save money but you don't move a finger.

The AI industry is also booming, businesses are looking for affordable solutions to automate their processes and one of those solutions is n8n, which you have and it's great... But multiple modules are required to be self-hosted like a scraper (FireCrawl is the best right now) and there are plenty of amazing agentic platforms (Flowise is a popular one) around that can help businesses create Chatbots to automate their customer support.

I think you should definitely evaluate what the market wants, and create a strategy for the apps you are adding instead of adding some random apps from time to time. You need a STRATEGY.

I am a marketer and built many SaaS so my vision may be different than some users here but my point is valid and if you think about it, you will agree with me.

I am also a business owner and like any CEO, I want to save money on my infrastructure and Cloudron has been a game-changer for me. The only con is the amount of business-focused apps to help me scale my infrastructure at an affordable price.

Some ideas that you could implement to set up a strategy:

1. Voting system (You do already but use a better platform and take it more seriously)
2. Look at trending repos (monthly period) on GitHub and spot the projects that get a lot of attention. Those popular projects will bring you customers because so many people want to host them but don't have the knowledge to do it. To name a few:

• Twenty CRM
• Plane Task Management
• Autogen (Their next version will be FIRE... Probably the best autonomous AI agent platform)

3. Look on Reddit the self-hosted section to see what apps are popular
   etc...

I have looked for an alternative, and to be honest, none are as good as Cloudron and it's why I want you to push your solution to a higher level. The same boring answer comes again and again: "We have limited resources" but just hire more staff. More customers = more revenues.

You could even change your business models to include Cloudron for free for personal apps, and charge a higher price for business apps (like 25$/m). Then you tag your apps as personal or business usage.

I think you need to revise your business model. You have demands and if you fail to meet your user's requirements, then you will miss on a big opportunity to make more money.

@nebulon I think you missed the point. Your paid customers (the ones that make Cloudron viable) are mostly businesses.

Business apps should be your main focus, not personal apps.

You could grow Cloudron revenue a lot in adding more apps helpful for businesses.

More business apps = More paid customers.

AI agents
Nocode platforms
CRM

All these apps requested so many times are the kind of apps that will bring you more paid customers but you prefer not adding them because it's "too much work". I don't understand your philosophy...

If you make more money, you can hire and growth.

That's the point. You ignore feedback from your paid customers... You implement a wish system that you ignore. Not sure what's your goals with Cloudron ecosystem but you have a big potential and you don't take it.

I love Cloudron, this is just a criticism feedback to help you understand your customers needs. Hope it will be considered.

For context, I want to replace the Chat Trigger node with my own chat interface to chat with AI agents. thanks

Hi,

I am interested to see how the community has been able to build a chat frontend inside Cloudron for n8n workflows, with the current limitation.

I have thought about using Streamlit but the LAMP app is only for web apps so it won't work. Some of you will probably tell me to code one myself and host it inside LAMP but I'm not a dev. I can code simple apps with AI but that's about it.

Streamlit libraries offer everything and its super simple to create small apps... I'm just not sure how I can host a Streamlit app inside Cloudron without creating a custom app. Any suggestion?

Thanks!

Nice! Thanks for sharing

IMHO the biggest strength of Google Workspace is email deliverability. That is the first thing I would consider before switching.

I don't understand why you guys are spending your resources to add another note-taking app. We already have Outline & Etherpad which are excellent so why add another one?

That is disappointing. Please add apps for businesses and bring diversity in new apps.

A few suggestions:

• CRMs
  Twenty: https://github.com/twentyhq/twenty
  ERPNext: https://github.com/frappe/erpnext

• AI Agentic Platforms:
  Langflow (https://github.com/langflow-ai/langflow)
  Flowise (https://github.com/FlowiseAI/Flowise)

• No-code Apps Builder:
  Budibase (https://github.com/Budibase/budibase)
  Appsmith (https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith)

Etc... And please don't tell me to vote for these apps. They've already been voted on and are on the wish list. You don't care much about the votes anyway.

I am a paid customer. I love Cloudron... but I do check weekly the forum to see new apps with the hope of seeing more business-oriented apps that could help me scale my business but instead, you are just adding apps that nobody cares about.

Had to share my disappointment... and I am sure I'm not alone.

@timconsidine Yes I have no doubt it requires a lot of times.

My point is that the apps added are so random... You try to please everyone but the paid subscription is more adapted to business users.

If you would focus on adding more apps that can help business growth and save money, you would have much more paid users.

I own many businesses and there are a lot of open source apps that can help us scale and minimize our costs. Some have been voted many times here, but despite this, they never been added.

I understand you may want to prioritize simpler apps to manage but is it the main point of paying Cloudron, to get complex apps fully managed?

I have seen a lot of users posting on this forum and say they would pay a higher subscription to have access to more business-oriented apps but all these replies seem ignored.

I'm not saying increase your price (pls folks don't throw me rocks lol) but if you limit good apps just because you feel we don't pay enough to justify the maintenance costs, then I believe you should really considering a new plan that give access to those premium apps. What you have to lose doing this? For a business paying 30$ or 40$ it's nothing. More revenue for you, make your business users happy.

Seem a win-win.