Selfhosted

I admire the thought of lowering the barrier to entry to start self-hosting for "normies". Not sure where you are located, but where I am, this price point is not realistic even for used equipment, not including RAM or storage. I'm not really sure what value add you are bringing to the table that one wouldn't get from just buying used hardware from an office surplus and if one is very inexperienced in self-hostong, looking into something like LTT is partnered with like Hexos.

What is the aim? People who want to get into it, but does not know how, or experts? Think half of the attraction of selfhosting is the diy aspect.

What extra would this bring if people can just buy the parts cheaper?

And for those who only want the out of the box experience why would this be better than, let's say a beestation? (Yeah price, I know, but you obviously would not have the same support level.)

Would only be worth it if you created a system for easily deploying applications on an already set up subnet with routing preconfigured.

Like set up a single server kubernetes distribution like microk8s or minikube on the server with metalLB and ingress already preconfigured on the server and router. You could also give instructions on how to install a GUI like Lens and how to use it to deploy a few things. Probably using workstation applications would be better than a web UI like Portainer to keep the server lighter, but either might work.

An interesting customer base might be small communal organisations. At our local scouts troop I had a discussion with a friend, who is also in IT. His idea (not fleshed out) was to provide small local organizations with a stack of already configured open source software to support the typical needs of such organizations (like a wordpress website, a nextcloud for file storage and common calender, limesurvey for surveys and event registration, mailman3 for mailing lists,...). Depending on the needs you could sell the initial setup process (your personal work in setting up and skill transfer) or ongoing support. Though such organizations normally don't have much money to give away. So probably its not really worth your time financially (though probably really appreciated in the community).

From reading the comments, I think you could be a lot leaner by selling the $100 setup fee, and telling people which "kit" is supported, and they buy that on their own.

That way you don't have to deal with any of the physical infrastructure of buying/selling/storing hardware, and people can do some customization.

However I do think you'd need to put some restrictions in place so that people don't buy cheap crap that doesn't work and expect you to set it up and support it. They have to buy the kit or other compatible hardware.

I'm not sure what services you'd support, but personally I'd be interested in something like a personal introduction and setup of

• docker
• proxmox
• yunohost
• backups / restore (practice restoring)
• smb shared folder
• pihole / pivpn (can you have wire guard and openvpn setup at the same time for different uses?

Maybe migration of

• nextcloud

You could make different prices depending on what service they want, kind of like a bike stop.

I wouldn't want a perpetual subscription, but I could stomach something like $100 setup + $5/mo for limited support for a year.

Best thing for me is that community support also exists for all these things too, but it's hard to do it on your own sometimes.