From ever-increasing subscription costs to outages and knowledge assortment, we do not like what the cloud represents. So we’re redefining what on-line providers ought to be. That’s, non-public, non-compulsory, and with out lock-ins or walled gardens.
That is why in the present day, Nabu Casa is altering its title. More accurately describe Home Assistant Cloud services actually do thatand to better reflect our values. Let me introduce the following.
Home assistant link
I’m Carl, VP of Commercial at Nabu Casa. You’ve probably heard of us as developers of sophisticated, highly optimized home assistant hardware. Beyond the hardware, we also manage and operate Home Assistant Link, and as one of the Open Home Foundation’s commercial partners, we’re here to help fund all of their great work. We’re very passionate about word clouds and want to explain how old names don’t fit and why Link ultimately does.
Created for the community
Home Assistant started with a group of core developers working nights and weekends alongside their regular jobs to create the platform. This is a good recipe for burnout and has killed many similar open source projects. So in 2018, we founded Nabu Casa and created Home Assistant Cloud to help prevent that from happening.
Home Assistant Cloud aims to make Home Assistant more accessible to more people, and it started with a problem many people had: accessing Home Assistant when you’re not at home without spending a weekend. It was also built to make the development of Home Assistant sustainable.
The aim was never just to collect donations, but to build an optional service that would benefit the community and fund the work at the same time. Currently, the majority of profits from subscriptions fund the Open Home Foundation. That money will support everyone working on Home Assistant, from salaried staff to volunteers, and keep the project sustainable. This change transformed Home Assistant from a passion project to one that can be reinvested into the community and one that can last for a long time.
a breath of fresh air
They even removed it from the Nabu Casa logo…is this too much? 🤔
We had a service that we and our community loved, but the name didn’t feel right. For example, Paulus, founder of Home Assistant and president of the Open Home Foundation, once said on stage, “Don’t buy a product that requires cloud operation,” and then in the next breath had to explain how Home Assistant Cloud is different, despite its name. That created unnecessary friction.
It also caused confusion, as some new users thought (and continue to think) of Home Assistant Cloud as a way to run Home Assistant in the cloud. This has never happened to us because we believe that’s what home assistants should do. Always run locally at home.
Big Tech is giving the cloud a bad name. Although Link runs online, it’s very different from other cloud-based smart home services.
| Home assistant link | big tech cloud |
|---|---|
| option: Your smart home can function without lights and everything else. | Required: Without it, all or most features will not work. |
| No lock-in: You will never get stuck using this service or anyone else’s. | walled garden: You’re locked into that one service, and that service either stops all together or your rates go up. |
| Your data is private: Your data is yours and will always remain so. | Your data will be monetized: You are the product, and your data is used for advertising, AI training, and sometimes sold to third parties. |
| Fund non-profit organizations: Nabu Casa donates the majority of profits from subscriptions to the Open Home Foundation, supporting the fight for privacy, choice, and sustainability. | First, we provide funds to investors: Profits flow to shareholders, debt repayments and other things come first, and funding developers comes later. |
Your subscription will help maintain Home Assistant, but we’ve been clear from the beginning that you don’t need Link to use the platform. We hate what Big Tech has done to smart devices: turning them into paperweights when they end support for them. Thermostats that can’t be scheduled and cameras that can’t detect motion give smart homes a bad reputation and create mountains of e-waste. If you don’t use the links, you’ll miss out on some extra features, but that’s about it. And if you do Using the link will still require you to unsubscribe, but your smart home will still work.
Big Tech treats your data as a commodity and a tool for mass surveillance. It is sold to advertisers, used to train AI, and traded to third parties for the best price. We think this is morally bankrupt. So when you use Home Assistant Link, your data is encrypted and only you have the key. Neither Nav Casa nor the Open Home Foundation wants your data. We strive to never have a chance to see the data.
This is how technology serves people. Your data is yours, a smart home that answers to you, not corporate shareholders.
choose your own path
Many people build DIY projects to customize their setups, and Home Assistant doesn’t help in that regard. But for those who prefer a simpler approach, Link makes it easy to use Home Assistant and opens up your local and private smart home to more people. For example, connecting to Alexa or Google Home can be complicated to set up yourself, but with Link you can… er… link You can send it to your home assistant without any hassle. Lack of time or know-how should not be a barrier to using the platform. Link assures you that this is not the case.
In addition to features that can only be performed online, there are also features that work even better when combined with Link’s connected services. For example, online speech-to-text converters tend to be faster, support more languages, and be more reliable than self-hosted alternatives. Similarly, Link provides a way to store backups online so your data can be recovered at any time in privacy. Additionally, if you have any issues with the functionality, real human being You can contact us for help. That’s right. He’s a real person.
See everything at a glance on your new account page.
we always We are currently working on improving our service and adding new features. You may have noticed that it is new and easier to use. Account pageSpeech-to-Textual content Labs exams, or a brand new settings web page for House Assistant with a setup wizard. What you most likely will not discover is a significant backend replace to enhance distant entry responsiveness (we have moved to a brand new naked metallic setup that all the time tries to hook up with the closest server). quick 🏎️). Most significantly, these updates permit us so as to add new security measures, account administration instruments, and extra.
What’s within the title?
At the end of the day, our actions speak louder than our product name, and while we support the development of Home Assistant, we’ll continue to support subscriptions that are focused on privacy, transparency, and not locking you in.
Whenever a feature is renamed, we always put our community first. Even though the service is from Nabu CasaHouse Assistant is a group undertaking and we worth your opinions and concepts. Do you want the brand new title? One thing we did not take into account? All of us have ears. We plan to make the title change official within the 2026.12 launch, so please ship us all of your suggestions by then. 👇
