If you’re choosing where your family’s photos, messages, and documents live, the default is usually a big cloud provider. That convenience comes with trade‑offs that aren’t obvious at signup.

The problem with centralized clouds

  • Price changes and upsells are guaranteed over time
  • AI training and data mining risk is growing
  • Outages, lockouts, and region policies can cut off access
  • Sharing family data with a third party increases your attack surface

A different path: keep it at home

A home cloud like Cloudcycle keeps your data in your house, on hardware you own. We configure your server to be local‑only by default, so it isn’t reachable from the public internet. That single choice removes entire classes of threats.

What you gain

  • Privacy by default: Not publicly exposed
  • Predictable costs: One‑time purchase, no monthly bill
  • Performance: Fast local network speeds for backups and streaming
  • Control: You decide who has accounts and what gets shared

Built on open source, with support

Cloudcycle runs Nextcloud on hardened Linux, shipped on a reliable refurbished Mac mini. You get open source transparency plus human support from a small two‑person team.

Curious about hardware options? See our Pricing or Contact us for a custom build.