just schedule an email to send at a later date/time, then if you don’t login to cancel it, off it goes.

I started with pfsense on Virtualbox, then quickly moved that to HyperV on Windows, where I had 3 locations running this as their routers for almost 2 years, even through COVID when I couldn’t get to some locations. I never had a single issue, just got annoyed at the constant Windows updates rebooting the systems and internet going down when it did. One of these sites ran over a 4G modem, that I connected to a VPS that I could tunnel down to access it remotely.

I then moved these sites to Untangle, still on Hyper V, then for own use, moved off VM onto baremetal on an HP Elitedesk 800 with 10GbE card that cost about £100 total, which ran wonderfully until Untangle got sold out and made me switch to…

…OPNSense on the same Elitedesk (after reading about PFSenses silly games they played), and this ran perfectly for about 18 months, and with solid 1Gbps on Wireguard, then after all these years of messing with routers, I finally switched to a Unifi UDM Pro SE last year and I couldn’t be happier. It does all I need, plus also CCTV recording (away from Blue Iris). I no longer have to worry that my DIY routers are going to fail on me. The other sites moved to ISP supplied modem/routers.

So, I would recommend Unifi hardware, despite it not being open source, mainly because, well, internet is a crucial service, especially in my household. And the UDM does WAN fail over well with my backup 4G modem. I can get it to do anything I need it to by just studying the GUI, I don’t need to read loads of info like I did with OPnSense etc.

I did once however, move from PFSense to Untangle on a remote machine. Because Untangle had a GUI, I fired up a VM on the same Windows machine as PFSense, set it all up with the same NIC settings, then adjusted Hyper V so that the Untangle VM booted and the PfSense one didn’t, then rebooted the machine and waited nervously for a few minutes, then boom, up popped the Untangle router! It felt good getting that done. It was only at my parents house, but still, it required a 90min journey if it failed.

With all the drama of Windows 11 in recent years, I’m glad I switched away from HyperV when I did.

I read your post last night, thought I’d reply this morning and am disappointed in the replies you’ve already had. So you’ve got issues with your self hosting, and it annoys people you haven’t figured out the solution?!? Odd.

Anyway, well done on recommending Runtipi as I’ve never heard of it and looks interesting. I’m on the look out for things to recommend to people, and that looks good.

As for what else there is, there was a thread here this week asking similar, and lots got mentioned in there. I’m too lazy to find the link, but dig about on the 1st page. Most have already been repeated in here already.

I think self hosting is a journey, where you learn as you go. It’s all part of the fun of it. And perhaps using a platform that has a healthy amount of solutions already posted is the key for you rather than focussing on a one-click interface. I myself use Unraid, and that community is full of Q&A for every type of user.