Leaderboard

First, let me start by saying I actually really appreciate this question and I hope my answer gives you faith in our long-term sustainability, exactly as you mention in the title of this thread. The lifetime license model is appropriate for a very particular type of customer with very specific priorities: Bring your own hardware Doesn't want an ongoing subscription Will mostly support themselves It was the appropriate model to launch with as well because it allowed us to inject a larger cash infusion at the start. However, we see multiple additional revenue streams available to us in the future: Subscription-based licensing. A lower price of entry for customers that aren't ready to make the lifetime commitment. Support. A more premium support model that can help you on a 1:1 basis when you have issues with your server. Cloud-based Services. Things like cloud backups (as an alternative or in addition to buddy backup). There are other cloud-assisted services such as reverse-proxy/relay that may warrant a subscription as well. Hardware products We will never force anyone to buy a specific hardware product to use HexOS, but we may offer some for those that don't want to build their own in the future. We actually have a few other ideas for additional offerings as well that would add additional revenue streams to Eshtek, but those are a little premature to discuss at this point. Bottom line: we don't just have a product plan, we have a full business plan for the future of this company and it has been designed to ensure a few key things: We don't run out of cash. We don't have to take on outside investors. We can remain true to our mission and vision. I hope this answers your question and gives you more confidence in our plans for the future. And if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Hello, not sure if it was requested already, but a curation for the "Actual Budget" app would be greatly appreciated. I found it by looking at the apps tab, and did some more research on it and i would love to switch to it instead of my current app of Quicken since I pay yearly to use it. I think it would help many nowadays due to inflation. Thanks!

Hey, that is a nice setup and will allow you to run a lot of stuff on your server 🙂 Some things to consider: You can only us the boot drive for the OS, 32GB are more then enough, 500GB are overkill, but you can still use it with 2 drives, Hexos will create a mirrored pool, which means you will have the capacity of 1 drive (4TBs in your case) and you can lose 1 drive. Additionally a mirrored Pool cannot be extended. If you want to have the possibility to extend the pool in the future, you need to have at least 3 drives now to create a RaidZ1. A RaidZ1 can be extended with additional drives in the future and you will have the capacity of your smallest drive * (the number of drives - 1) Your Motherboard has a Realtek NIC, which have a tendency to not work well or at all with Hexos. It's a new 5Gbps NIC which might work better, but keep this in mind if you face network issues. Hexos is an awesome, easy to use OS and offers exactly what you need to get started. It offers both Plex and Jellyfin as 1 click install apps, so that you have the choice what you want to use. It also offers other popular apps as 1 click installs and more apps will be supported in the future.

Hello @jonp, I really appreciate your detailed response. Thanks a lot.

I'm personally hoping there is some consulting in the mix as well. I man above what would be deem to be general support issues. For instance, every app I run is accessed by HTTP not HTTPS. I would love someone to point me to suitable options that would help secure my system. And as an example, and only an example, it could dramatically increase my satisfaction with HexOS without actually making any changes to the core product. And if they develop a great solution for someone they can make it available for anyone who needs it either as contract work or as an addon service. It can all mesh together improving my experience and many others overall.

I signed up as an early adopter last November, but have not yet installed it (running TrueNAS on an IXSystems Mini 3.0X+ w/a 5x8TB RAIDZ1) I'm building a custom NAS (probably overkill, this is all homelab stuff) now (parts slowly arriving) CPU: Intel 14500 I5 RAM: 128GB DDR4 (ouch!!!!) Mobo: ASUS B760M-A D4-CSM Supermicro 2U chassis 7x12TB (will be a RAIDZ2) with an HBA card and SAS extender in case I want to add more than the 8 drives the chassis supports 1TB Samsung 990 Pro NVME (boot drive, and planning on putting my VMs there, or at least the fast ones I need, w/backup to the big vdev) Intel A380 (hoping it'll work) for transcoding dual 10GBps NIC for connecting to my backbone I'll be reading a ton in the next week here 🙂 ~Horist

Hello. Thanks for writing us. We currently don't have a student program but please reach out next year and we hopefully will have a program in place. Try to save your allowance up as it's going to be more than $5 but a lot less than the $299 it will be at that time. Good luck with your studies. HexOS Team

For us to dig deeper, I'd like you to report back with your hardware configuration as well as confirm what version of the OS you are running (25.10.1 or earlier?). There were some issues with the TrueNAS SCALE network reporting graphs in earlier releases. We'd also like to see a packet cap or something more than just a domain to prove what you're claiming here. Maybe wireshark monitor? Did you configure anything within TrueNAS SCALE's UI itself at any point or did you just utilize the HexOS dashboard for all your needs? Lots of things could account for the disk activity itself (such as background tasks or maintenance operations like the scrub that happens by default once a month) but the network activity is not us. StorJ is the used by TrueCloud if you configure your server to use it for backups (not something we support via HexOS today at all). Furthermore, the storj connection and the websocat connections are independent of each other. Websocat is used to make an outbound connection from a HexOS server to our Command Deck as outlined in one of our earlier blog posts here: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2024-07-30.html. That's it. We do not and cannot transfer your data via that connection. The entirety of that connection is to give us API access to manage your system via our interface at deck.hexos.com. This ties back to something in TrueNAS and not anything with HexOS. Once you've unclaimed your system, we no longer have any access to do anything with your system. Generally speaking, it was quite an alarmist post and makes some pretty aggressive claims about data being "exfiltrated", that we were "misleading" about our product, and that you haven't seen any "meaningful updates." This was stated in our very first blog post that I previously linked but you won't by reliant on deck.hexos.com for long: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-11-25.html. Furthermore, having a management interface hosted via cloud doesn't go against self-hosting as a concept. All of your data and applications are still running local on your LAN, which gives you the value of self-hosting. Management interactions for most customers are limited to initial setup of storage, folders, users, and applications. Once running, users mostly just interact with the applications and data, which run entirely local. Ultimately we want to know if this is a real bug/issue that ties back to TrueNAS SCALE so we can escalate to the right people or if this is simply a misunderstanding or misconfiguration. In reviewing multiple test systems we have configured and going back over a month in the network reporting, we see no significant network activity that matches anything close to what you are reporting.

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since we launched the HexOS Beta and the early access campaign. What a journey it's been! In today's blog post, we're going to provide a summary of this past year's accomplishments, a run-down of what's left to achieve our 1.0 release, what's coming next, an update on the AnyRaid project, and our HexOS Holiday Sale! Read all about it in our latest blog post: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-11-26.html

So I noticed that HexOS requires encryption at the folder-creation stage for future offsite backups. Since Buddy Backup isn't out yet, how will the migration path look for users who have already populated large unencrypted datasets? Specifically: Will there be a built-in 'Migrate to Encrypted' tool to move data into a new encrypted dataset for Buddy Backup? Will Buddy Backup support 'Replication-level encryption' (encrypting the stream during transit/at rest on the destination) without requiring the source folder on my local NAS to be encrypted? What about application data folders that are already not encrypted, how would those be handled?

Hello, It seems the after the update some systems on reboot are reaching out to our server so it doesn't know your there. Try the following. Login to TrueNAS interface. Left side select "system". Then after screen refreshes select "shell" from the list. Paste in the following command. Can't use normal short cuts Will need to use Shift + Insert Key for pasting. sudo python /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/scripts/vendor_service.py If that works within about 1 min you should be able to go to deck.hexos.com and see your server or claim it.

Thanks for sharing. X is one account that does not interest me.

Def not cloud only. If your isp/network supports peer to peer, we can coordinate that and then get out of the way. That is what's included in a lifetime license. If we end up having to relay traffic for some users, that will require a subscription as we will have to pay for the relay traffic, but obviously it will still be encrypted.

I ran into the same problem, and this fixed it. I think the install script for HexOS for this app needs to be modified slightly. Made a data set in the home-assistant folder, give it a name like "config" or "data", and modify the "Host Path" for "Home Assistant Config Storage" to be in that new dataset. Now I need to look at how to remove a bunch of junk from a folder without removing the datasets I want.

So, I built twin HexOS systems (almost) in Jonsbo N5's 1 Ryzen 9 9900X (12C/24T) and 1 Ryzen 7 9700X (8C/16T) 1 RTX 4070 TI and 1 RTX 3070 For both: MSI Mag X870E Tomahawk 96GB DDR5 Boot - Crucial P310 1TB in Raid 1. Storage - 4 x Seagate Ironwolf Pro 4TB RaidZ1 1000w Modular PSU PCIE X8 SAS card and onboard to connect all 12 bays in the N5 Intel X550T2 Dual 10GbE NIC Full case fan replacement with Nocuta fans and a NH D15 cooler. Mirrored backups between the system over Tailscale and one machine moved from my house to the workshop 30mins away for offsite actual a backup backup. Too much? ETA- I built them in August last year, before things got...too crazy

This fixed my issue I was having with HA, thank you! 🙏

So i decided to build a NAS to rip my movie collection and to tinker with some future projects when i have the time to learn about VM and AI I have a 9950x i got from a friend and 64gb of ram i bought 2 years ago for 340 dollars can you believe it i miss those times A used 5060ti 16gb found for cheap so i said to myself why not build a NAS it will be nice project during my free time. So i bought ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming motherboard , i have an old m.2 500gb for the os another 2tb nvme ssd for apps or whatever and i have two 4tb hdd laying around and i wanted something easy to use as the OS My question is what is the best approach for this build should i go for the hexOS and if yes how should i configure the ssd's to avoid any issues and i'm planning to add more hdd in the future once i figure out how to use a NAS Keep in mind I'm just a simple PC gamer never tired something like that, I'm a NAS and networking virgin. Thank you in advance any advice will help.

Hey, Unfortunately Hexos does not offer the possibility to use any drive as a write cache, you can only use it as a read only cache drive, which only offers a benefit in particular use cases and streaming isn't one of them. You can use your current 500GB drive for the OS it's just a lot of wasted space. But if that's what you have and don't want to spent ridiculous amount of money for a new lower size SSD, go with the 500GB one. You don't necessarily need a new NIC, it's just possible that your current will not work, but not a certainty. Some of the newer Realtek NICs work fine. Give it a go and only buy a new NIC if yours isn't working or causing issues.

https://www.gingerling.co.uk/how-easy-is-hexos-to-resurrect-when-youve-ignored-it-for-3-months-because-you-had-a-new-boyfriend/ Enjoy 🙂 Ax

I really appreciate all of your help. Thank you so much!!!

Hi, I’m one of the happy lifetime license holders for HexOS, and overall, I’m really excited about where the project is headed. But there’s one thing I’m worried about: long-term sustainability. I get that selling lifetime licenses is great for upfront cash flow, but how do you plan to keep the project financially healthy in 5 or 10 years? Honestly, it reminds me a bit of what is happening with Plex, and that’s kind of worrying. For the same reason, I’ll never buy services like pCloud with “lifetime” storage. I assume you have a strategy for this—maybe optional subscription services (like cloud backup, premium/enterprise support, etc.). Could you share a bit about it? Are you confident that these income streams will be enough? Even though I’ve already paid for my license, this actually affects my decision about whether to start my main server on HexOS. Long-term viability matters more to me than the initial cost, to be honest. I’m not trying to be critical—just looking for some clarity to feel more confident about the future. Thanks for any insights!

I think having a curated app for Matrix could be huge for HexOS since it could be a great and easy replacement for Discord.

At this time we are only curating applications that are available on the truenas app catalog and seems like matrix/synapse is not on the catalog at this time. I suggest you reach out to the developer of the app and request they submit their app to the truenas app catalog. Instructions on how they can do so can be found at https://github.com/truenas/apps/blob/master/CONTRIBUTIONS.md

Title says it all. Thanks.

Every time I update Hexos to latest version the website stops working. I can still login via TrueNAS but hexos is broken.

can you try doing this

Down the Road, it would be really awesome if we would get a curated installation for Paperless-NGX! https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ Paperless is a really awesome Document Management System for all sorts of things. Paperless have lots of Small Features like full OCR and full in document text search. With a Duplex scanner, you can easly backup ALL of your paper documents and have them automatically sorted - a perfect companion for HexOS that aims to make digital backups a breeze! With a Curated and easy install, it could also help to backup analog paper 🙂

Update: I think I was able to get to the bottom of it. A while ago, after upgrading the server, I set a bunch of power efficiency options in BIOS to minimise the hardware impact on the power bill. However, it seems these settings may impact the system stability at high loads, which is what I've been experiencing. I also played around with the EXPO profile a little bit since I've seen system instability with some stock profiles in the past.

I am not able to check it myself at the moment. But I would recommend you to attach a display and a keyboard to your server, also your USB with the OS. When you restart the server it should tell you a way to stop the boot sequence and enter your BIOS. From the BIOS you can set the USB as your boot device and then restart the server again. Now it should boot into the HexOS install sequence where it will reinstall everything from scratch, and you can decide whether or not you want to wipe your HDD/SSD pools. I recommend you to get the newest HexOS ISO file and put that on your USB before you go through this process 🙂

We push updates out now in the UI/UX itself too every time we do one. Check your notifications.

Oh and regarding this: You can unclaim your system from the Settings -> Reset page without losing any data.

I did miss this before I got around to it. I ended up reinstalling. I was able to migrate all my data off since it was in read only to save my self a headache of reorganizing all of it, then set it back up and moved data back onto it. This time I took a trueNAS backup so this cannot happen again. Thank you for your time and help!

Hello, At this time HexOS is still in beta so by purchasing a lifetime license you will get access to our beta software and all updates are included with the lifetime license at no additional cost. In the future there may be some features that are not included with the lifetime license but that is limited to features with an ongoing cost. For example if we decided to offer a cloud storage solution.

It is a must these days to have TailScale support, especially for secure remote access. It is far too easy to mess up a WireGaurd/OpenVPN Config, if the goal is security and simplicity, Tailscale VPN access should be a high priority.

I emailed the hexos support team mid December about adding ARM as a curated app because I was never able to get it to run on my own... This was the response I got, so I am hopeful! Hello, Thanks for writing us. I've taken the app and passed it on to the app people. It looks like a perfect app for how we all want to automate backing up of our collections. We will look into adding this to our collections. Thank you for supporting HexOS! HexOS Team

+1 is there any plans regarding ARM as of today ?

Would be great if we could get ente photos support just like immich. I tried to set it up myself but couldn't. Here's the link: https://ente.io/help/self-hosting/

I also would love to see paperless ngx curated!

Where can one see the number of licenses on thier account? I just bought a second lics for $99 as I would like to setup an off-site backup down-the-road, once you have settled into a non-beta version. I have been playing a bit with my current setup, but haven't committed all my files over from my Synology NAS until you move to Prod/final version. (I guess that is in Q1 of 2026!!) I will be looking at setting up a very simple HexOS offsite box, just bare system with a few large HD's in it for backing up my more important data. I am just waiting till you have moved out of beta. Thanks for the sale and the cool interface!! Merry Christmas all!

Another quarter until version 1.0. Can't say I'm not disappointed, but I get that quality takes time. At least give us a bone in the meantime.

I would like to see first party support for placing any app behind some of the most popular VPNs (PIA, Nord, Express, Proton, Tailscale, etc), as well as custom VPNs (WireGuard, OpenVPN, etc). For example, you may install “The Lounge” IRC client and have all internet communication pass through a PIA VPN so that your home IP is not exposed while chatting. Traditional methods of doing this involve painful configuration of iptables or other firewall rules. I believe this is an area where HexOS could really simplify things: Install a VPN plugin, authenticate with it, and then simply assign an app to a VPN plugin via the app’s settings if desired. It would be fully accessible from the home network without going through the VPN, but all internet traffic would go through the VPN with a kill switch in case the VPN goes down. Thoughts?

So the difference really comes down to the account you use to login and manage each system . if you want to give someone else access to manage one of the systems. If the license is on your account, you have to give them your login. Otherwise, buying on a seperate account you have to give them the seperate login. The latter not being as cheap as the former.

I think we are mostly on the same page with your response so let me throw out some scenarios to make sure we are all clear. 1) I was not a lifetime owner. I bought the $199 because I want to own a NAS and am joining the Beta though pretty late. I am now the proud owner of a HexOS NAS. and have built a machine and loaded the product. 1 license on 1 account and 1 server. 2) I see the two server option $298 option. That is equal to the original $99 deal plus the $199 current and long standing post black friday 2024 advertised price. I have 2 licenses on 1 account and up to 2 servers either physical or virtual including a mix of the two. If I don't know about the original black friday sale I simply see a (currently) full price license and a packaged reduced option for a second. 3) I bought in at the original black friday price and want a second license for another server. I am also 2 licenses on 1 account because there was no way to buy a second $99 black friday license on any account but the original. 4) People with vision (not me) who bought multiple licenses. Not sure I will get this right so please strike out what is incorrect. Those folks would have 2 licenses on 1 account. 5) Same as four except they bought multiple licenses on multiple accounts. For simplicity let's call it 2 licenses on 2 account. Assuming all these are valid (and someone exercised the options) it appears the buddy backup definition is really the hangup. I only see one reference to the buddy backup on the HexOS.com website (and no folks, I did not do an exhaustive search looking for more information). The site says "Buddy backups and replication Easily transfer data between two HexOS systems. Backup your data to a friend’s remote server using a secure connection". Since it only says systems and not licenses or accounts, I think that is a little confusing when held up against your above statement "The additional licenses is for users that want to setup multiple systems of their own, not for buddy backups.". I am guessing the confusion may simply be how will the buddy backup be executed. I believe TrueNAS already has ways to do backups. As well there are lots of apps that will do it if I say I don't like the way TrueNAS does it. So going out on a limb here I hope this backup is seup in the dashboard by identifying the second system. I hope it is along the line of I list the second license I want to backup to and when built (of course) I do the same in reverse order listing license 1 to connect to. I am setting aside encryption and size allocation because that is secondary to me but it must be managed somewhere. If it's account and license in that crosslinking process that will complicate or possibly eliminate the backup buddy option. I believe that is what we loyal but extremely ambitious are trying to understand. Is backup buddy system to system, license to license or account to account. Oh and for clarity I am thinking my userid or email represents my account and something else is my license. The statements that the second $99 license is not for backup buddy but you can be your own backup buddy (as sad as that sounds) might just need clarification in the future like before the sale ends for those just seeing this conversation and thinking I didn't think about being my own backup buddy. Way more than enough said and I will bow out now.

So If I am understanding this, if the second server is in a relatives house it is not their independent account but rather is is another server under the same login. So I don't think we can use the term "buddy backup" unless you are saying each server can allocate an encrypted space on the other that can't be accessed. I think that will be the terminology sticking point. I must say when I first saw the option to buy a second $99 NAS server I myself thought I could setup up a buddy backup as well at a relatives home but wasn't sure it could be used as a full independent server by that relative because they are not going to want to go down the NAS path. I am guessing a lot of people will have that same thought and if i am still being honest I think Eshtek realized that would be the reason many folks would go for that option. So, let's be clear and careful about the use of the term "buddy backup". Can it be a remote backup? Yes. You have already told me above that it can. But can it be a buddy backup? It sounds like no, not really as defined in the sales materials. Now, as for that person who bought two accounts during the original black friday sale. I can see them having a legit issue because I believe I have seen them say that is why they got the two accounts in other forum posts a while back. If this is true it should have been stated then that multiple servers on one account can't be true buddy backups. I don't really have a horse in this race because I want another server that will be my 'media available outside my home' through Plex or Jellyfin and Immich.

Fyi, Q3 update went live today along with a new docs site: docs.hexos.com We are listening to you guys!

Hey all, as the name implies I would like to see a simple checkbox to make folders available via nfs. As a bonus a list of IP ranges that are allowed to access the share would be perfect. The user mapping to the user owning the folder so that I do not need to care about permissions and just access the data via NFS could be handled automatically as a default. Please feel free to ask for clarification and to add your ideas below!

DIsregard, I have worked out how to do this in the global network settings! Thanks!

You need to login into Truenas, go to storage -> Manage Devices -> select your pool and then the first drive. On the right side on the Disk Info part press "Edit" and there you have the possibility to set the HDD Standby and/or Advanced Power Management. Under Advanced Power Management everything from Level 1 to 127 will spin down the drive, from 128 to 254 will not spin down the drive. You have to do this for every HDD. I don't know how Hexos is reacting to this and which side effect it can have, also for other people reading this, spinning down drives is generally not recommended because the spin ups are putting wear on the drives, and drives are vulnerable during spin ups. When drives are spinning there is an air cushion which is keeping the head of the disks, while this is not the case during a spin up and a head crash can occur. Also when leaving a drive sitting without spinning it can have a negative impact on the lubrication of the bearing. Also make sure that the drive doesn't not cool down to much, this is especially import in the winter if the server is sitting in a cellar or basement where the air temperature can drop and this can also cool down your drive significantly, depending on your setup. There have been plenty of perfectly working drives without issues, which did not recover from a spin up. So be warned, that it might shorten the lifespan of a drive. Also you might want to look into enabling the different C-States in the Bios, this can also save a significant amount of energy.

Yup! We went through great pains to make our UI mobile responsive, and this will make porting it to mobile apps easier in the future. For now, navigating to the deck from mobile is already a pretty pleasant experience.

The more powerful hardware you use the more your electric bill will be. I would go with an Intel cpu to use Quick sync for your plex streams. It allows you to get away with using a less power hungry cpu. I would suggest any intel cpu that has a UHD 700 igpu. It will handle multiple 4k streams. The intel i5 12500 is a 65w cpu and can be bought new for $175 on Amazon US. The 12600k is on sale for $150 on Amazon US but is a 125w cpu. You can find better deals if you search /r/hardwareswap on reddit or search on ebay. Then grab the cheapest Z790 or B760 chipset motherboard that fits your needs/budget. With this CPU you can choose to get a motherboard that uses either DDR4 or DDR5.