this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Introducing Homelabinator, the easiest way to self-host. (homelabinator.com)
submitted 17 hours ago by iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello Lemmy! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Myself and a few friends love self-hosting, but believe that it's hard to get started. So we created what we believe to be the easiest gateway to homelabbing, and we called it Homelabinator!

To celebrate our launch, we are running a giveaway! Submit a screenshot of a subscription you have canceled to enter into a giveaway for a free domain of your choice!

Check it out here: homelabinator.com

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[–] Nickm8@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Been using a similar project with friends, inspired by how Yunhost does manifests, and uses Tailscale / your Headscale

Is basically just a layer / scripting between Proxmox and Kubernetes for homelabbing

Doesn't require a custom ISO and is just a post install script on Proxmox.

auto ssl setup for all services with friendly URLs on your domain, control plane with Terraform-like declarative definitions for your lab

It's helped us a lot, but it's not something we have had time to tackle all the work involved to make it something valuable for others when everyone does homelabbing so differently.

The cons:

  • It's opinionated in its setup.
  • Certain tools like Nginx Proxy Manager+Adgaurd, and certain self hosted tools for uptime and resource usage monitor/alerts are not trivial to change to use what you prefer
  • only tested with machines above certain specs, no arm support.
  • new machines / (even compute nodes) all have to be proxmox
  • Adding new machines and deciding what runs where to be optimal is not a beginner friendly decision, and likely needs community support and tooling around that, if it's aimed at beginners

To do this properly is a big job, so hope this project works out for you as I like to see more community and people supporting each other with thier setups

[–] Mister_Hangman@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago

So Deployrr. But vibe coded and worse.

[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 19 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Great idea, really good name.

I looked at the back end source.

  1. Do I understand correctly that when I run your app in my PC, the ISO is built on your server and then I download it?

  2. Why does app.py submit an ip address to a google form?

https://github.com/homelabinator/homelabinator-backend/blob/main/api/app.py

You should know, stuff like that is going keep a lot of self hosters from recommending this.

[–] iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.ml 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
  1. That is correct! We looked at different options on how to build the ISO (mkisofs is really cool but doesn't play nice with the NixOS installer image), and ultimately went with building it on a Nix server.
  2. Apologies for that, that was a leftover from when we were trying to gauge how many people were downloading ISOs when we showcased it to a club on campus yesterday. That has now been removed.
[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 3 points 12 hours ago

Awesome, thanks for the answers

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 32 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

For people asking "ok but what is it":

Built on the shoulders of the giants that are NixOS and K3s, Homelabinator is an opinionated customization of NixOS

Also you should test your site on mobile. It's half broken for me.

[–] iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.ml 11 points 16 hours ago

Thanks for the heads up on mobile! We agree, certainly everything needs more work, but full disclosure, we are all full time students and working on this project on the side. :)

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 14 hours ago

Oof, yeah, it is not mobile friendly.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Looks vibe coded AF, is it ?

[–] taco_shale032@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

It does seem odd to leave comments like https://github.com/homelabinator/homelabinator_unified/blob/a3301d01d732449ba65561c1033e158839e7244f/.gitignore#L66-L67 in. But aside from that, some of the code is also written in an unusual way imo.

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip -4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Which part of the code?

(I guess your silence means you never looked at the code)

[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 16 hours ago

How is it easier than yunohost?

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

OP, I took a cursory run through of the site. Looks good. Could really have potential for those just dipping their toes in the self hosting pool. I haven't tested the ISO created tho. One thing, Tailscale client id & secret. I'm not sure I would want to disclose that on an unknown website, because of privacy issues. I understand why you included it, but it seems like an brief explanation as to how to do that manually, once the ISO is deployed, for those who might have some of the same reservations. Perhaps I overlooked that if it exists. Otherwise it looks like it would be a great introductory to self hosting.

Onward and upward.

ETA: I like the name too.

[–] Eirikr70@jlai.lu 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not fond of what makes it easier to set up a homelab. Because it might give the impression that you can run it with very little skills. And that opens the door to making your setup a netbot.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

And that opens the door to making your setup a netbot.

........then you learn. That's pretty much how I did it. First Linux server I every deployed on a VPS, got taken over almost immediately. So you drop back to your trick bag, and spool up on security.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social -3 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Long time lurker

Joined: a week ago

[–] Micromot@piefed.social 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

You can lurk without an account tho, doesn't mean they are credible or not

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 12 hours ago

also I don't expect my accounts to go forever here. I have had three iterations. kbin, mbin, and piefed. I expect to have another one at some point. I like that stuff changes and new stuff pops up.

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 2 points 14 hours ago

No account is needed to read Lemmy. I lurked a long time before creating an account myself.