CasaOS is yet another project to assist people into self hosting. But this one gets a whole lot of things right.
What it gets right
- The setup process is smooth, with a machine running tailscale & CasaOS. Most of the heavylifting for self hosting a home sever is done. The UI for apps is beautifully done.
- Gets the UI right for volume management. Adding and removing volumes is beautifully done. Assumes you understand docker compose though. Nice balance of power and flexibility.
- Minimal but well curated app store
- Support for third party app stores
- Very well made file manager
- Supports network shares with samba inherently. Very powerful.
- Can cap ram usage and cpu usage per application. A very useful feature since some applications like Jellyfin, photoprism can potentially take over the entire ram.
What it does not get right
- Entire backups are not obvious, duplicati is recommended. But that only backs up selected folders. I would prefer something along the lines of time machine in MacOS. This is actually a deal-breaker, but I don’t think there is any project out there which figured this out either.
- Hosting to public domains is not inherently obvious. It would be nice if it supports
- Communicating between apps is non – intutive. I’ve still not figured out how to get sonarr to talk to transmission. Or how I can configure Homarr & make it talk to jellyfin etc..
- Network shares is great, but need polishing. Currently its without auth and no way to tweak permissions. Probably advanced and might be potentially out of scope for the project, but it does have the idea of making a folder network share-able. Would be nice if there is an app just to interface with samba, so that CasaOS just interfaces with the app for network sharing capabilities.
Verdict – Recommended
If you are starting out on your self hosting journey, definitely recommend checking out CasaOS. Among Umbrel, Tipi & CasaOS, CasaOS definitely gets most things right.