Subscription Service vs NAS

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Subscription Service vs NAS

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www.adrianearnshaw.com
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This afternoon I hit a moment where I was at a loose end and wondered what to do. I decided to start a cost comparison chart, purely for my own entertainment and knowledge mainly to prove to my household that running a NAS 24/7 can actually save you money in the long term. I've made a start and wondered what other services others may run that require a subscription but can be run for free on a Synology NAS?

The costs provided include any applicable VAT at UK rate of 20%. I have gone for the family price in respect of a music service subscription as that would seem fair and reasonable in this type of comparison. The price of the Synology units and hard drives is from the current prices on Amazon. Happy for this post to be removed if it is of absolutely no interest to anyone.

Comparison Table.png
 
At $20./month, Google offers essentially unlimited storage. Seems like you pumped up software costs for the cloud... many services which are freely available... and which compare or exceed what Synology packages offer... Can't imagine why the cloud option has a music cost, where the NAS does not, ditto Pocket. Also... password manager, RSS feed are available without cost. AdGuardHome runs on a cheapo RPi.

Glad that worked out for you, but the numbers may not be typical for other users.
 
Last edited:
I am very thankful for “Timed Script Files”..
Years ago I called in a favor, and a guy wrote me a script file for deleting files by age (days), and also by folder size (GB). It will even report if it burps.
This one simple thing, run nightly, has saved me HOURS & HOURS of my time doing the same thing manually…. In 3 or so years of perfect operation on multiple cameras.
You are talking about a LOT OF TIME & EFFORT savings..
Time is more expensive than monthly charge, but I appreciate keeping costs down, too!
 
I think you may have misunderstood, the figures I have provided are annual costs. So you are paying $20 x 12 = $240 a year, although I am not sure how you are doing that as you need to speak to Google directly to get unlimited these days. If you want Spotify without adverts you have to pay for it, Synology has Audio Station and I can play music and podcasts without adverts for free.

Pocket, read Wallabag which is open source and free
RSS, most limit the number of news feeds you can subscribe to. If you use freshRSS you have unlimited.
Password manager, read Vaultwarden open source and free.
AdGuard, yes runs on a PI but if you use just cloud services there is a subscription cost.
 
The music subscription cost: I pay around £120 per year but also this is to access "all the world's music" whereas Audio Station doesn't give access to a streaming service for free does it?
 
If you want Spotify without adverts you have to pay for it, Synology has Audio Station and I can play music and podcasts without adverts for free.
Seems apples/oranges... you claim no cost for the Synology music... did you steal it? How do you get it for free? Surely there is a cost for content. Audio Station is minor.
Vaultwarden open source and free
With or without NAS, it is free. And it to runs on RPi. No need for expensive NAS.
AdGuard, yes runs on a PI but if you use just cloud services there is a subscription cost.
AdguardHome is free.
If you use freshRSS you have unlimited.
My browser is unlimited. And there are many free RSS readers, and limited Synology mobile choices.

Clearly we have different infrastructure constraints. If I look at your numbers... NUC +cloud probably comes out well ahead in my neck of the woods.
 
For me the savings with a NAS come from backing up my two mission critical computers and associated data to remote locations (time machine over zerotier) which otherwise I would do in the cloud. And for the amount of data I have, that would turn out expensive over an extended period. I don't have any figures to back this assertion up mind! (except to say 3Tb of C2 storage is €291 a year).
 
If @AdrianEarnshaw’s intention was to convince family that he needs the NAS (a familiar situation) then this approach seems reasonable to me: get some numbers and a story. It’s a ploy adopted by many politicians who unbelievably get elected, often with large majorities, much to the incredulity to people with half a brain.

I got my DS1520+ based on a business case of ABB for PCs and the roadmap Mac support 😂
 
But that is a great deal from Microsoft.
If you are going to buy a M365 subscription then bookmark it in Amazon and watch the price fluctuate. Also check the price between the M365 sub-only and plus which ever AV bundle.

The emailed code can be applied anytime to a running subscription so it's worth keeping an eye on offers. E.g. last time in June I got it* for £46 for the 12 month family subscription plus free 3 months extra and 12 month of McAfee. I've not used the AV but could have if I wanted it. Last year we had a straight 12 month family sub. for £48 and the first year was £52. That was when we stopped using Mac Office 2008. The normal list price is £80.

*I begrudge having M365 but it's to fit in with PC owners that use their office kit for non-work stuff.

That 6TB storage is 1TB per person and with a family account the parent/owner invites other M365 accounts to access the licence. So there's no single 6TB pool where all dip in and use what they need.
 
I am my own CFO, :) but I really value the security aspect of my NAS. Google is subject to possible hacking, and also to government agencies and whilst I don't have any embarrassing data, I value my privacy. I also value wire speed access to me shared drives, which is unaffected by internet availability.

Just sayin'
:)
 
I am my own CFO, :) but I really value the security aspect of my NAS. Google is subject to possible hacking, and also to government agencies and whilst I don't have any embarrassing data, I value my privacy. I also value wire speed access to me shared drives, which is unaffected by internet availability.

Just sayin'
:)
Not many here would argue with you :) But it's an interesting theoretical comparison even if there are pros and cons for each , even if they are not directly comparable.

Addendum: and 'value' doesn't solely hinge on monetary cost. In the past I've made a list of features of whatever I'm looking at and rated must have / like to have / don't care, and then the cost was considered. And don't underplay emotive reasons for spending your cash ;)
 
... I really value the security aspect of my NAS. Google is subject to possible hacking ...

I wouldn't take it so easy.
Every single NAS owner is subject to a possible hack. Most of the owners are in domestic environments. There is a network +2M SYNO NASes who have no idea that they are a potential part of the botnet.

You only get security if you have a regular check of your network environment with Wireshark and know what to look for.

SOHO environment hacking has potential because these people have a connection to the corporate environment (VPN, RDP, USB, ...) and this is the more important goal for the dark side of the moon.

Just to be sure.
 
my .02

Nothing like having all of your content centralized and accessible 24/7 behind your four walls. One must also take into consideration ISP data caps in addition to the costs you pay for whatever streaming services.......
 
each way (NAS on home vs Subscription Service) has pros and cons,
and comes down to each one's needs and preferences.

Some random thoughts

- if you know nothing about computers and have no interest to learn, subscription services are the only way to go

- many of us here have fun spending time to setup an use a NAS or a firewall router etc. The saving on costs is only the excuse. If there not a lot of data, probably the NAS cost is somehow higher. My data are about 1 TB. I know my NAS has a small cost on me, but I know and accept this.

- I don't have an easy answer to data protection on cloud e.g. about corrupted files. Synology with BTRFS or FreeNAS with ZFS, give me some assurance that my data will be intact when I'll need them. For sure the big cloud companies take care of this, but I'm not sure I can make it in my backup process.

- I wouldn't upload unencrypted documents or photos on a cloud provider, even if I have nothing to hide. I can easy make encrypted backups of my computers to the cloud, But again I cannot think of an easy way for all my documents, photos etc to be on the cloud encrypted and easily accessible from different PCs (Windows, Linux, Mac).

- I would have at least 2 cloud backups to different providers, otherwise I should have 1 cloud backup and at least 1 local backup (usb HDDs or wheteever). In this case a NAS makes things easier. I backup every PC and others (eg documents from my iPAD) to the NAS and from there I keep 2 off-site backups.

- I need local space for frequent large backups, like images from my Windows PC. Some are incremental some are full. They would take very long on cloud with my 50/5 VDSL line. In my NAS they saturate the Gigabit Lan port, in both upload and download (confirmation of backup).
 
to be fair, in comparison of the Cloud services - to the costs in the NAS part you need to add:
- cost of local backup (another NAS or external drive or ....)
- cost of near 24/7 redundancy = then you need to add one more spare disk to the NAS operation
- UPS cost to assure entire local operation (router, primary NAS, backup NAS/ext. dev, ...)
- cost of the entire electricity (router, primary NAS, backup NAS/ext. dev, ...).
Note: not sure about the validity of @AdrianEarnshaw power (DS920+ & 4x2TB WD Red) consumption when he wrote:
... that running a NAS 24/7
with the value of about 38.64GBP/year.
Check:
It means 38.64 / 365days / 24hours = 0.0044GBP/hour
When avg cost is about 17p/kWh, then the NAS consumption must be about 0.0259kWh = 25.9W/hour what is less than DS920+ equipped with 4x1TB WD Red (Syno spec in their white paper) = 32.17W


Finally, you will get a similar cost, from the data operation point of view.
From the other point of view, the NAS is really better choice for people who know what to do. No cost point there.
 

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