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I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech.

I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of any tooling that would let them set these things up quickly and reliably. I fantasize about running a little consultancy that would set up and maintain a tailored package of self-hosted OSS software for such small businesses. But I haven't actually studied whether there's a workable business model to be had, or whether there's enough quality self-hosted software out there to adequately cover the needs of most small businesses. I'm curious if HN thinks this could be a viable business...

jotm 7y ago
Sounds like a good idea to me. Most people would go with the big company in my experience, but your niche is huge anyway. WPEngine seems to be doing alright still (I remember thinking no way would anyone pay for just WordPress hosting... I was wrong), as are the many small website/app/hosting providers/consultancies.
- lioeters 7y ago
  > WPEngine seems to be doing alright still They raised $250m a couple years ago, and have been acquiring smaller companies like theme shops, local site management tool based on Docker and Electron, etc. They've got a mature platform suitable for businesses, and it looks like they have a very healthy growth trajectory. On the other hand, for me they're becoming the "big company" in your description, and I'd prefer a self-hosted or at least open-source solution.
ridruejo 7y ago
https://bitnami.com/stacks https://bitnami.com/stacks helps quite a bit (disclaimer, I am the cofounder)
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Seconding Bitnami - I didn't have time to learn Ruby, read through configuration files, search old forums for slightly-obsolete guides, and get familiar with all the tech behind Redmine. Downloaded the installer from Bitnami to my local server, clicked through - boom, done. Thanks for the effort you put into simplifying the use of all those applications!
- mynegation 7y ago
  Question to people with better knowledge of English than me (or lawyers): what is the difference between disclaimer and disclosure? To me “I am a co-founder” sounds like a disclosure (of vested interest) and disclaimer would be something like “I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This is not a legal advice”
  - cooperadymas 7y ago
    There might be a legal difference but in common parlance I see them frequently used interchangeably. A disclosure reveals some previously unknown information, while a disclaimer renounces your responsibility for something. So your example is correct, although "I am not a lawyer" could also be considered a disclosure.
  - sjy 7y ago
    Disclosure means sharing information that was previously “held close” (private). When people are afraid of being distrusted, they disclose their interests as a show of good faith. Disclaimer means refusing to accept responsibility for someone else‘a decision to rely on you. When people are afraid of getting sued, they disclaim liability.
  - jimws 7y ago
    This did sound like a disclosure to me as well. A disclaimer would be something like, "Use it. Your mileaage may vary. I am not responsible for any troubles you encounter whilen using it."
jannes 7y ago
Synology NAS devices offer a few of features that you mention: email [0], calendar [1], document sharing [2], chat [3], office apps [4] Shift/inventory management would need to be added via third-party software (or implemented in spreadsheets). I've heard of companies setting these up for small businesses. [5] [0] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/mailplus https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/mailplus [1] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/calendar https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/calendar [2] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/drive https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/drive [3] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/chat https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/chat [4] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/office https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/office [5] https://www.synology.com/en-global/wheretobuy/United%20Kingdom/System_Integrator https://www.synology.com/en-global/wheretobuy/United%20Kingd...
codingdave 7y ago
I did similar work between gigs a couple years back. There is absolutely a customer base for such things. But they don't have tech budgets - even pricing our services fairly cheaply, they would balk at the cost. So there may be a business opportunity, but you need enough scale that each single customer is happy with the price.
- rolha-capoeira 7y ago
  Yep. I wanted to do this with websites for mom & pop operations, but why would they pay me when they can get their nephew to set up Squarespace for them at $10/month? I believe there is a niche to be served here, just not sure exactly how yet.
  - mynegation 7y ago
    Axé! I also think there is a niche but the key here is to make it as simple, low-friction, and support-free as possible. Supporting a very diverse range of small businesses might be more expensive than what they pay.
- m_fayer 7y ago
  Maybe it's particular to my local culture (Berlin), but many people I talked to said they would pay a premium to support a small business and to acquire independence and privacy. They're not technical, but they understand the ramifications of these things. Not sure if this culture is everywhere, but my gut feeling is that in Berlin it's big enough.
  - munificent 7y ago
    My understanding is that German mass culture has a much better understanding of the value of privacy because of the relatively recent history around the SS and the Stasi. Many German citizens really feel the risk of not having personal privacy in a way that people in other countries don't.
  - sjy 7y ago
    I have noticed the same tendency among people who follow politics and the media closely in Australia. Some political activists are organising talks designed to introduce non-technical people to doing their own cryptography. People would definitely pay a reasonable premium for a secure service where they get to meet everybody with the physical ability to snoop on their data.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
A few of us are trying to get development moving again on Sandstorm.io. It's a super handy (and default-extremely-secure) piece of software, it just needs a little nudge of developer interest. It's original target was the enterprise space, but it's an awesome self-hosting platform for privacy nerds too. The OSS is out there, but you've gotta wrap it in enough design work to make the experience comparable to closed source offerings: Most businesses aren't going to want to pay for worse software.
- m_fayer 7y ago
  This looks great!
- zellyn 7y ago
  Came to the comments to lament Sandstorm's demise. Glad y'all are looking to keep it moving!
- PenguinCoder 7y ago
  Privacy FOSS nerd here; I'd love to offer my help for developing, maintaining, and security reviews. Please send me an email if you'd like additional support. (in profile)
- gitgud 7y ago
  I loved sandstorm and used it for a while. The only issue I had with it, is that is was very complicated to add your own sandstorm app to your instance and the documentation to do so wasnt too great
fonosip 7y ago
We are giving this a shot at https://ba.net/private-cloud-office https://ba.net/private-cloud-office
- fonosip 7y ago
  Main issues are financing high saas customer acquisition costs. And keeping technical support costs down. But the market is big.
gramakri 7y ago
Please give Cloudron (https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io) a try. We provide a solution that makes it easy to self-host apps. We provide Ghost, Rainloop, Nextcloud, InvoiceNinja, GitLab, Rocket.Chat among other apps. Full list here - https://cloudron.io/store/index.html https://cloudron.io/store/index.html Disclaimer: I am the co-founder
- voxl 7y ago
  $30 a month is too expensive for some of these tools (and perhaps too cheap for some of the others). For instance, I run my own Nextcloud server for 10$/month, the amount of maintenance per month is 0 hours. Nextcloud has already provided a very simple installation setup using snap. It would be cheaper, in the long run, for someone to pay a contractor 300$ to setup a 10$/month droplet on Digital Ocean. What I'm getting at is you may want to consider per app pricing as a customer is probably interested in a very specific app and thus will price check only for that app.
  - gramakri 7y ago
    I agree that the maintenance effort differs wildly per app. I don't actually agree that nextcloud is 0 effort post-setup. If you see our forums or the nextcloud forums, you will see how many questions are really just installation and update related. We have so far not wanted to get into per-app pricing, because we see ourselves as app packagers and not providing support for the app itself. For example, we don't actually provide any support if Rocket.Chat's mobile app has some problem. Making it per-app pricing can mislead people into thinking we support the app. There is also the issue that we might be seen as competing with the app authors (if they have a SaaS model). The 30 USD is essentially the price for automatic updates, backups, dns/tls management, deployment with security best practices etc. It is also a 'service' where you can contact us if something goes wrong. As you say, if you want to DIY/time is cheap, cloudron is expensive. That said, if you use the DO marketplace image, you get a 50% discount (you will see the discount coupon when setting up a subscription).
    - thestepafter 7y ago
halfeatenpie 7y ago
There is definitely a market, but I'd say it's a difficult nut to crack. You first want to do a quick cost-benefit-analysis first to make sure you're making an informed decision. We won't be factoring privacy, working with a big company, or other concerns in this thought. We will only focus on the numbers. Lets look at email/productivity market real quick. Google's base package is 6 dollars a month per user with all the backups, support, and infrastructure in place (realistically, you'll want the 12 dollars a month package). Since email is critical infrastructure (I believe it's one of the most critical elements of a business), lets say two DigitalOcean VPSes at 6 dollars a month each (one primary, one failover) with a license of HostinaBox/Vesta/Whatever Open Source Solution you use with DigitalOcean's backups enabled. Not the "best" design but something I'd say is OK and within scope for a small business. That's 12 dollars a month base costs + your consulting time for a sizeable capacity. For a small business of 1 person, they get a better deal by just going with Google. Google has their applications and softwares easily integrated with their other services, comes with their productivity suite (GSuite == Google Docs, Drive, etc.), and as a small business who is probably risk adverse in their decisions when it comes to these things, feel more comfortable working with Google. For a small business of 5 people, I'd say it's still more worth it for them to use Google as that's 30 dollars a month (most consultants charge more than that an hour). If they hire a consultant and if the poo hits the fan, then they'll be paying a consultant money to execute the disaster recovery plan. Even if you did take them on as a client, that's a maximum of 18 dollars a month you get to keep (assuming no issues/errors happen). For a small business of 50 people, then now it gets to an interesting territory. However, for 50 people I'd change up the base server/system configuration to have higher capacity, more fault tolerant, and resilient under disaster scenarios (which would increase base operating costs). I'd say this really depends on marginal benefits and based really on relationships established with your clients. In the end, you can probably make some $$$ but your time and effort might be spent on more productive and lucritive tasks. This is also assuming that the self-hosted OSS software is of quality that the clients will be happy with. I'd argue Google's mail offering may have annoying/restrictive spam policies and be frustrating at times, but they have a high quality product made at an affordable price point. The variation in quality of OSS products concerns me as well as developers who are probably overworked and underpaid for their contributions asked to make changes to support clients they're not directly paid by. As a risk averse business, I'd rather rest my eggs in the Google/Microsoft/whoever basket and directly work with the "entity" that maintains the codebase (or has the talent/expertise on-hand to make adjustments) rather than a middle intermediary of equal level but, in the end, is subject to the decisions and leadership of the OSS product. Now take this to another step and say you build a consulting company that handles all of these as a one-stop-shop? Well... Then I don't see anything new service/model here than what a local IT consultant company can offer. So to really make this work I'd say a shop that automates these deployments on-demand and offers a large selection of applications to use is probably the best step forward. Even then, I don't really see the viability of this on a funding perspective except for scaling. In the end in my perspective, the opportunity is there but it'd be hard to do it right. Also funding the developers of the software you're making money off of would be great, but that's a whole nother thing (and I can squabble about that for hours). Quick plug: two very good friends of mine are in the process of tackling a similar issue via their venture[0]. I am a customer of theirs but have been friends with them even before this venture. Really recommend their product as an affordable and reliable product that "just works". [0]: https://mxroute.com/ https://mxroute.com/
_zamorano_ 7y ago
To me, most small bussiness would suffice with a cheap Hostgator/Goddady webhosting with cPanel. Heck, I personally "mantain" (not that I do much), all my company employees email address, different domains, a couple of simple webpages, calendars, issue tracker... All without doing much apart from setting the anti-spam, and installing the Installatron applications I need most.
scrozier 7y ago
Having started my career in this space, many years ago, I've grown to think there is not a good business model to be had. It's too bad, because there's a huge demand. These small companies wind up with bad solutions all around.
- bobmichael 7y ago
  Could you elaborate on this? I've been toying with this idea for a while now and if love to hear your insights.
gpdpocketer 7y ago
Totally easy to step off the net. You just put bits of it in your own space. I wanna write a book titled: "how to run your small/medium-sized office with just a linux box on the wall and your staffs cell phones..." Pretty sure I read a FAQ for how to do this, 20 years ago, though...

jotm 7y ago

Sounds like a good idea to me. Most people would go with the big company in my experience, but your niche is huge anyway. WPEngine seems to be doing alright still (I remember thinking no way would anyone pay for just WordPress hosting... I was wrong), as are the many small website/app/hosting providers/consultancies.

lioeters 7y ago
> WPEngine seems to be doing alright still They raised $250m a couple years ago, and have been acquiring smaller companies like theme shops, local site management tool based on Docker and Electron, etc. They've got a mature platform suitable for businesses, and it looks like they have a very healthy growth trajectory. On the other hand, for me they're becoming the "big company" in your description, and I'd prefer a self-hosted or at least open-source solution.

ridruejo 7y ago

https://bitnami.com/stacks https://bitnami.com/stacks helps quite a bit (disclaimer, I am the cofounder)

LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Seconding Bitnami - I didn't have time to learn Ruby, read through configuration files, search old forums for slightly-obsolete guides, and get familiar with all the tech behind Redmine. Downloaded the installer from Bitnami to my local server, clicked through - boom, done. Thanks for the effort you put into simplifying the use of all those applications!
mynegation 7y ago
Question to people with better knowledge of English than me (or lawyers): what is the difference between disclaimer and disclosure? To me “I am a co-founder” sounds like a disclosure (of vested interest) and disclaimer would be something like “I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This is not a legal advice”
- cooperadymas 7y ago
  There might be a legal difference but in common parlance I see them frequently used interchangeably. A disclosure reveals some previously unknown information, while a disclaimer renounces your responsibility for something. So your example is correct, although "I am not a lawyer" could also be considered a disclosure.
- sjy 7y ago
  Disclosure means sharing information that was previously “held close” (private). When people are afraid of being distrusted, they disclose their interests as a show of good faith. Disclaimer means refusing to accept responsibility for someone else‘a decision to rely on you. When people are afraid of getting sued, they disclaim liability.
- jimws 7y ago
  This did sound like a disclosure to me as well. A disclaimer would be something like, "Use it. Your mileaage may vary. I am not responsible for any troubles you encounter whilen using it."

jannes 7y ago

Synology NAS devices offer a few of features that you mention: email [0], calendar [1], document sharing [2], chat [3], office apps [4] Shift/inventory management would need to be added via third-party software (or implemented in spreadsheets). I've heard of companies setting these up for small businesses. [5] [0] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/mailplus https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/mailplus [1] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/calendar https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/calendar [2] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/drive https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/drive [3] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/chat https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/chat [4] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/office https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/office [5] https://www.synology.com/en-global/wheretobuy/United%20Kingdom/System_Integrator https://www.synology.com/en-global/wheretobuy/United%20Kingd...

codingdave 7y ago

I did similar work between gigs a couple years back. There is absolutely a customer base for such things. But they don't have tech budgets - even pricing our services fairly cheaply, they would balk at the cost. So there may be a business opportunity, but you need enough scale that each single customer is happy with the price.

rolha-capoeira 7y ago
Yep. I wanted to do this with websites for mom & pop operations, but why would they pay me when they can get their nephew to set up Squarespace for them at $10/month? I believe there is a niche to be served here, just not sure exactly how yet.
- mynegation 7y ago
  Axé! I also think there is a niche but the key here is to make it as simple, low-friction, and support-free as possible. Supporting a very diverse range of small businesses might be more expensive than what they pay.
m_fayer 7y ago
Maybe it's particular to my local culture (Berlin), but many people I talked to said they would pay a premium to support a small business and to acquire independence and privacy. They're not technical, but they understand the ramifications of these things. Not sure if this culture is everywhere, but my gut feeling is that in Berlin it's big enough.
- munificent 7y ago
  My understanding is that German mass culture has a much better understanding of the value of privacy because of the relatively recent history around the SS and the Stasi. Many German citizens really feel the risk of not having personal privacy in a way that people in other countries don't.
- sjy 7y ago
  I have noticed the same tendency among people who follow politics and the media closely in Australia. Some political activists are organising talks designed to introduce non-technical people to doing their own cryptography. People would definitely pay a reasonable premium for a secure service where they get to meet everybody with the physical ability to snoop on their data.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

A few of us are trying to get development moving again on Sandstorm.io. It's a super handy (and default-extremely-secure) piece of software, it just needs a little nudge of developer interest. It's original target was the enterprise space, but it's an awesome self-hosting platform for privacy nerds too. The OSS is out there, but you've gotta wrap it in enough design work to make the experience comparable to closed source offerings: Most businesses aren't going to want to pay for worse software.

m_fayer 7y ago
This looks great!
zellyn 7y ago
Came to the comments to lament Sandstorm's demise. Glad y'all are looking to keep it moving!
PenguinCoder 7y ago
Privacy FOSS nerd here; I'd love to offer my help for developing, maintaining, and security reviews. Please send me an email if you'd like additional support. (in profile)
gitgud 7y ago
I loved sandstorm and used it for a while. The only issue I had with it, is that is was very complicated to add your own sandstorm app to your instance and the documentation to do so wasnt too great

fonosip 7y ago

We are giving this a shot at https://ba.net/private-cloud-office https://ba.net/private-cloud-office

fonosip 7y ago
Main issues are financing high saas customer acquisition costs. And keeping technical support costs down. But the market is big.

gramakri 7y ago

Please give Cloudron (https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io) a try. We provide a solution that makes it easy to self-host apps. We provide Ghost, Rainloop, Nextcloud, InvoiceNinja, GitLab, Rocket.Chat among other apps. Full list here - https://cloudron.io/store/index.html https://cloudron.io/store/index.html Disclaimer: I am the co-founder

voxl 7y ago
$30 a month is too expensive for some of these tools (and perhaps too cheap for some of the others). For instance, I run my own Nextcloud server for 10$/month, the amount of maintenance per month is 0 hours. Nextcloud has already provided a very simple installation setup using snap. It would be cheaper, in the long run, for someone to pay a contractor 300$ to setup a 10$/month droplet on Digital Ocean. What I'm getting at is you may want to consider per app pricing as a customer is probably interested in a very specific app and thus will price check only for that app.
- gramakri 7y ago
  I agree that the maintenance effort differs wildly per app. I don't actually agree that nextcloud is 0 effort post-setup. If you see our forums or the nextcloud forums, you will see how many questions are really just installation and update related. We have so far not wanted to get into per-app pricing, because we see ourselves as app packagers and not providing support for the app itself. For example, we don't actually provide any support if Rocket.Chat's mobile app has some problem. Making it per-app pricing can mislead people into thinking we support the app. There is also the issue that we might be seen as competing with the app authors (if they have a SaaS model). The 30 USD is essentially the price for automatic updates, backups, dns/tls management, deployment with security best practices etc. It is also a 'service' where you can contact us if something goes wrong. As you say, if you want to DIY/time is cheap, cloudron is expensive. That said, if you use the DO marketplace image, you get a 50% discount (you will see the discount coupon when setting up a subscription).
  - thestepafter 7y ago

halfeatenpie 7y ago

There is definitely a market, but I'd say it's a difficult nut to crack. You first want to do a quick cost-benefit-analysis first to make sure you're making an informed decision. We won't be factoring privacy, working with a big company, or other concerns in this thought. We will only focus on the numbers. Lets look at email/productivity market real quick. Google's base package is 6 dollars a month per user with all the backups, support, and infrastructure in place (realistically, you'll want the 12 dollars a month package). Since email is critical infrastructure (I believe it's one of the most critical elements of a business), lets say two DigitalOcean VPSes at 6 dollars a month each (one primary, one failover) with a license of HostinaBox/Vesta/Whatever Open Source Solution you use with DigitalOcean's backups enabled. Not the "best" design but something I'd say is OK and within scope for a small business. That's 12 dollars a month base costs + your consulting time for a sizeable capacity. For a small business of 1 person, they get a better deal by just going with Google. Google has their applications and softwares easily integrated with their other services, comes with their productivity suite (GSuite == Google Docs, Drive, etc.), and as a small business who is probably risk adverse in their decisions when it comes to these things, feel more comfortable working with Google. For a small business of 5 people, I'd say it's still more worth it for them to use Google as that's 30 dollars a month (most consultants charge more than that an hour). If they hire a consultant and if the poo hits the fan, then they'll be paying a consultant money to execute the disaster recovery plan. Even if you did take them on as a client, that's a maximum of 18 dollars a month you get to keep (assuming no issues/errors happen). For a small business of 50 people, then now it gets to an interesting territory. However, for 50 people I'd change up the base server/system configuration to have higher capacity, more fault tolerant, and resilient under disaster scenarios (which would increase base operating costs). I'd say this really depends on marginal benefits and based really on relationships established with your clients. In the end, you can probably make some $$$ but your time and effort might be spent on more productive and lucritive tasks. This is also assuming that the self-hosted OSS software is of quality that the clients will be happy with. I'd argue Google's mail offering may have annoying/restrictive spam policies and be frustrating at times, but they have a high quality product made at an affordable price point. The variation in quality of OSS products concerns me as well as developers who are probably overworked and underpaid for their contributions asked to make changes to support clients they're not directly paid by. As a risk averse business, I'd rather rest my eggs in the Google/Microsoft/whoever basket and directly work with the "entity" that maintains the codebase (or has the talent/expertise on-hand to make adjustments) rather than a middle intermediary of equal level but, in the end, is subject to the decisions and leadership of the OSS product. Now take this to another step and say you build a consulting company that handles all of these as a one-stop-shop? Well... Then I don't see anything new service/model here than what a local IT consultant company can offer. So to really make this work I'd say a shop that automates these deployments on-demand and offers a large selection of applications to use is probably the best step forward. Even then, I don't really see the viability of this on a funding perspective except for scaling. In the end in my perspective, the opportunity is there but it'd be hard to do it right. Also funding the developers of the software you're making money off of would be great, but that's a whole nother thing (and I can squabble about that for hours). Quick plug: two very good friends of mine are in the process of tackling a similar issue via their venture[0]. I am a customer of theirs but have been friends with them even before this venture. Really recommend their product as an affordable and reliable product that "just works". [0]: https://mxroute.com/ https://mxroute.com/

_zamorano_ 7y ago

To me, most small bussiness would suffice with a cheap Hostgator/Goddady webhosting with cPanel. Heck, I personally "mantain" (not that I do much), all my company employees email address, different domains, a couple of simple webpages, calendars, issue tracker... All without doing much apart from setting the anti-spam, and installing the Installatron applications I need most.

scrozier 7y ago

Having started my career in this space, many years ago, I've grown to think there is not a good business model to be had. It's too bad, because there's a huge demand. These small companies wind up with bad solutions all around.

bobmichael 7y ago
Could you elaborate on this? I've been toying with this idea for a while now and if love to hear your insights.

gpdpocketer 7y ago

Totally easy to step off the net. You just put bits of it in your own space. I wanna write a book titled: "how to run your small/medium-sized office with just a linux box on the wall and your staffs cell phones..." Pretty sure I read a FAQ for how to do this, 20 years ago, though...