With synology, its easy to use but you need an account with them to do a bunch of stuff easily.
However, you can also self host a bunch of stuff, without a synology account, but its easier with.
Personally, I’ve got a synology and would recommend it. My next has will likely be a beefier synology as I’ve got a pretty basic one and it struggles to have all the arrs and jellyfin running at once. My next after that would probably be a repurposed PC or laptop or self build. The synology experience will allow me to identify what I actually want to achieve.
If you currently don’t use any cloud services, then maybe its not for you. If you do, I’d get the synology with the synology account and reduce my cloud dependency. You don’t have to start with perfect. There can be a path that’s just gradual incremental improvement.
With synology, its easy to use but you need an account with them to do a bunch of stuff easily.
However, you can also self host a bunch of stuff, without a synology account, but its easier with.
Personally, I’ve got a synology and would recommend it. My next has will likely be a beefier synology as I’ve got a pretty basic one and it struggles to have all the arrs and jellyfin running at once. My next after that would probably be a repurposed PC or laptop or self build. The synology experience will allow me to identify what I actually want to achieve.
If you currently don’t use any cloud services, then maybe its not for you. If you do, I’d get the synology with the synology account and reduce my cloud dependency. You don’t have to start with perfect. There can be a path that’s just gradual incremental improvement.