Another way to put this is that Synology misjudged their customers' appetite for alternatives.
The ease of use of the Synology solution was always a plus of the product, but Synology misjudged the values and abilities of its core customer. They also misjudged the rapidly maturing market of competitors (e.g., why am I buying a Synology instead of UGREEN?)
Their core customer always had the ability to set up their own NAS in a more manual way, they just didn't really want to have to do that when an easier solution was available.
This isn't a situation like iCloud where the whole purpose of the product is to provide a service that 99% of the customer base doesn't know how to do on their own.
For a typical Synology customer, setting up their own TrueNAS box is something that probably only takes an hour including watching a YouTube setup tutorial. The person who is considering a Synology solution in the first place tends to be highly technical to begin with.
I can confirm that I bought a Synology NAS because I didn’t want to tinker with the backup system for my family’s data. And when I read about the drive requirements for a new Synology NAS I decided that tinkering might not be such a bad thing. They really screwed up.
Same. I like my Synology unit well enough but I see a trend toward less openness, toward greed (including removing capabilities from units they've already sold) and toward a decline of their business as a result of tanking customer goodwill. So they no longer seem like a reliable bet for the long term, which is what I'm looking for in a NAS.
That is exactly where I am. The value prop on synology has fallen off. Esp since they have let their kernel rot. There are tons of perf they are leaving on the table. The default external ports are usually 1g and most others have moved to at least 2.5g.
I just wanted something I just didnt have to mess with a lot. And could pop in an external USB drive here and there. Other solutions will fill that need just fine too. Just didnt really want to fiddle with DIY.
The ease of use of the Synology solution was always a plus of the product, but Synology misjudged the values and abilities of its core customer. They also misjudged the rapidly maturing market of competitors (e.g., why am I buying a Synology instead of UGREEN?)
Their core customer always had the ability to set up their own NAS in a more manual way, they just didn't really want to have to do that when an easier solution was available.
This isn't a situation like iCloud where the whole purpose of the product is to provide a service that 99% of the customer base doesn't know how to do on their own.
For a typical Synology customer, setting up their own TrueNAS box is something that probably only takes an hour including watching a YouTube setup tutorial. The person who is considering a Synology solution in the first place tends to be highly technical to begin with.