Selfhosted

It's a mature, well-maintained system and has a solid catalogue of well-maintained apps. I run Nextcloud, Navidrome, Calibre Web, a Matrix Server and Element (on different I.P.s), Wallabag, a Firefox sync server and a Collabora office suite (REALLY useful) on a ThinkCentre Tiny that I got from EBay for just over £100 (storage extra!) It's been running pretty seamlessly for over a year and I feel confident tinkering, doing routine things through the UI and getting a bit deeper with the CLI.

On the support, I've used a lot of FOSS support forums and I think YNH's is one of the best. They are not as polite or friendly as Nextcloud's and they will ignore irrelevant, snarky or duplicate questions, but if you have a genuine enquiry, they will hold your hand through a problem. I think they use a triage system and take shifts covering it. The XMPP chat, duplicated on Element, is also very helpful.

Personally, I have a fondness for Yunohost, in the same way I have a fondness for Debian and for Nextcloud. It is a well-organised group effort which requires some commitment and knowledge from users but not too much. It needs some attention but gives back more value than a user has to.put in. If I could learn all the ins-and-outs of network security, I might try a Docker set-up, just for boast-value, but with Yunohost I don't have to.

I recommend Hendrick's comment in this discussion.

I was in a similar situation as you, with an existing docker solution, looking for something easier to manage. Yunohost had this hype behind it that I couldn't resist. At first it did seem easier with the official apps, but as soon as I needed anything outside the set boundary the dream collapsed. The final nail for me was not being able to get smb working.

Good thing I had kept my docker setup safe so it was easy to revert to it. It's more of a pain, but it's also more versatile and capable so I have no better choice at the moment. Portainer helps a lot.

I tried Yunohost once, and everything worked as long as I stuck to the officially supported apps. The community forum was supportive within reason, and would respond with advice fairly quickly. When I reported an error with an unofficial app, however, I was instantly told off that I shouldn't expect any help.

Now, having used and admined my Linux desktop systems for a decade (without claiming to be an actual sysadmin), I nosed around the system a bit and to my eyes it seemed a right mess of app and user folders, permissions and containers. Surely, a combination of my limited understanding of server apps and a system that is made primarily for GUI use to make administration easier for beginners.

What I mean to say is, if you already run a set of working docker containers, you're probably more advanced than the intended Yunohost user. I was that half ounce more literate that I became frustrated with the GUI-centric setup, and imperial pounds too illiterate to actually muck around in the command line.

Look at it this way, Yunohost offers a fraction of the apps available on Docker, and not all of them are maintained. They do offer a graphic admin interface and out-of-the-box working setups (or did five years ago when I tried it).

If you have the knowledge to do what you're doing now, you have no need for Yunohost. It's janky at best and doesn't have much facility for advanced use. It wants you to do it their way only, which is fine if you're new at all this. Eventually, I think people just move on.

I tried it, but not knowing what was going on under the hood made me worried about how I would fix anything when it broke, and how timely updates to software would be. I also don't think it had any kind of central user management for the installed apps.

If you're already familiar with docker I would stick with that.

1. Unable to host apps without exposing them to the web
2. Despite a simplified GUI, a lot of the system is still dependent on CLI
3. they make you use subdomains and / as well. Like blog.website.com/blog
4. Outdated apps (some much more than others)
5. Poor/no support when something goes wrong
6. An entire Debian generation behind (not sure if that one matters but it is weird)
7. Can't run multiple of the same service

I've tried them all and it's overall the best but still has a whole lot of room for improvement

I am a relatively new Yunohost user, and I’m a big fan. I’ve dabbled with Docker, but I’ve never been quite able to figure out how to make it work. Yunohost took the hard part away and made it pretty easy to set up.

That said, I don’t view it as a long term solution for me. I don’t like not really knowing entirely how it works, and I’ve had issues trying to configure the reverse proxy to connect it with a domain name. (I purchased one from Porkbun, which is apparently not supported.) Until I learn a little more, though, I like it.

If you stick to the apps that are indicated as being well supported it's good. The main reason I use it is because I'm part of a team that includes people not comfortable with the command line so having a web interface to manage a server means not everything falls on my shoulders.

One of the primary requirements for my latest project moving a bunch of stuff to self hosted is that if it has a GUI that is going to be internet facing, it either has to support OIDC or it has to be something low risk enough that I feel comfortable setting it up without much security and just setting up a single basic auth login with traefik. A few apps I had trouble finding, but worked most of it out.

I love Yunohost and have used it for like 10 years. That said, if I was comfortable using Docker, I probably would just use that.