How do we compare to?
I love hashicorp way of describing their software, they always have a clear page in the doc where they explain how they compare with others, like here: https://www.consul.io/intro/vs/zookeeper.html
I already wrote it somewhere, but I don't know, and it is probably outdated, so here it is.
I'll try to do it in 2 steps:
- indie.host
- libre.sh + souk
How does IndieHost compare to:
- Google Apps
They offer mail + cal + card + docs + user management and Enterprise features like auditing. Their offer is proprietary from beginning to the end. It is also surveillance capitalism.
But this is the experience we'd like to offer.
Their offer is simple, 2 offers:
-
all the apps
-
- auditing for enterprise
-
OVH/Gandi/Namecheap/Hetzner
They offer free software as a service (One clike WordPress or Nextcloud). They use proprietary software to do so.
The software are not integrated one with another (independent).
They are not surveillance capitalism, but they are still high concentration/centralization.
I also don't know the level of collaboration with upstream. (do they PR bug fix or features to Nc?)
The service usually runs in shared php env or dedicated VM. For the dedicated VM, it is not HA.
And another point, it is usually blurry about the following points:
- updates
- backups/restore
- support
They do offer email, but not necessarily cal/card/files with this email
- chatons
Many chatons are 1 person service. The rest are associations, and the service is made by people on their freetime.
If you are a company or an association, you want to make sure that if there is a problem during the day, there is a phone number you can reach to get somebody to help you.
Mostly shared services, and not much possibility to get a dedicated instance.
- libreho.st
From now, mostly shared services, and not much possibility to get a dedicated instance.
From these 2 categories (chatons and libreho.st) most don't offer email.
- opendsi
B2B
This is starting to be interesting. You get enterprise support. I think it is reasonably automated to reach this price. You can get hosting for whatever I guess, as long as you pay.
We don't offer there level of support, and consulting to there customers. They offer a lot more than just hosting.
The self service experience is not idea.
B2B
You can ask anything, but it is a highly personalized service. Great IT support, and probably consulting also.
- protonmail
not open source, and just email
- posteo
OpenSource they say, but still waiting :) And just email (we had some customers form them migrating to us for that I guess)
- sandstorm
I thought they stopped ;) https://sandstorm.io/news/2017-03-13-joining-cloudflare
I think here we have a unique proposition:
- B2C and B2B (small B ;) )
- self service
- Nextcloud (card/cal/files/docs)
- fediverse
- backups
- 2 full time tech to support the infra :)
- infra HA
- infra mutualisee
How does libre.sh + souk compares to
- sandstorm
They are opinonated on how apps integrate, and I think apps should integrate with there native APIs. (For instance, they have a trick on how to select a picture from Nextcloud in your WordPress, but you can use this trick just in there platform, not out side)
- yunohost
1 server, suitable at most for 1 organisation. SSO is really smart :)
- Nextcloud + apps
Well integrated, but opinionated in PHP (And you can't integrate well something else, like WP)
- cozycloud + apps
Well integrated, but opinionated in Go + js (And you can't integrate well something else like WP)
- ISPconfig
It was made 20years ago for shared hosting lamp stacks. This is what we want to build, but for kubernetes clusters
- Cpanel ...
Proprietary, and we don't necessarly want to host VM
same as ISPconfig
- cloudron
I kept the nicestes for the end. This is almost what we want to build, but. It is single server. It is for one organisation. And so it is difficult to do multitenant. Also, it is not 100% free, when you install it in your org, you need to pay access to the application. Basically, the frontend part of the store is open source, but the backend not. You could reverse engineer of needed, but meh... Also, they don't play nicely with the community, their code is on their repo, and not upstream.
- bitnami
And the most interesting one :) I'd say the main issue is that you need to run your kuberntes server :) Once you do, then you get the libre.sh experince we want to develop. (they developed kubeapp ) They don't care about solving email and SSO issue. They also don't play well with upstream, they have all there code in their repo.
So I'd say that our project is unique and has a clear value proposition that doens't exist yet:
- publish as much as possible upstream
- make a beautiful platform that is
- multi tenant
- self service
- developed with SSO in mind for everything
- core service (mail + Nextcloud)
- suitable for
- people
- organisation (family, association, SME, schools..)
- Networks of organization
I know it sounds like resolving la quadrature du cercle, but we think it is possible :)