 Unless you're using a device from the Unify Dream Machine lineup, a Dreamwall or the Unify Express, which all have the Unify controller built in, then the question will come up, where should I host my Unify controller? If you've already decided you want to go to self-hosted route and you're just here looking for a tutorial on how to set that up, you'll find my tutorial linked in the description below. If you're looking for other solutions that come with automatic updates such as a Cloud Key, Unify Zone Hosting, or a third-party solution such as Hostify, that's what I'll be covering today, so let's get started. Are you an individual or forward-thinking company looking for expert assistance with network engineering, storage, or virtualization projects? Perhaps you're an internal IT team seeking help to proactively manage, monitor, or secure your systems. We offer comprehensive consulting services tailored to meet your specific project needs. Whether you require fully managed or co-managed IT services, our experienced team is ready to step in and help. We specialize in supporting businesses that need IT administration or IT team seeking an extra layer of support to enhance their operations. To learn more about any of our services, head over to our website and fill out the higher S form at lorenzsystems.com. Let us start crafting the perfect IT solution for you. If you want to show some extra love for our channel, check out our swag store and affiliate links down below that will lead you to discounts and deals for products and services we've discussed on this channel. With the ad read out of the way, let's get you back to the content that you really came here for. Now, the first option we're going to talk about is the Unify Cloud Key. This is a pretty simple device that does have auto update, has the controller built in and whether you're using one of their gateways or not. If you're just using, for example, switches and access points, you can completely manage this. And as far as remotely getting back to it so you can manage one of your clients, this would be tied to the Unify dashboard. That is an option they have with all of the controllers, whether they host it or you host it. And this allows you to easily access each one of those. Now they have a capacity calculator down here and the max for the Cloud Key is only 40 devices. So if you have a client with more than 40 devices, this rules this option out. But as I said, it's not a bad option. It's going to be easy to set up and easy to manage. And you just leave one on site for each one of your clients. Now the next option is Unify's own official hosting. They'll be deployed and manage Unify network sites, manage up to a thousand devices. But $29 a month is not for a thousand devices. They only give you 100 devices for $29 a month. And then $99 a month lets you manage up to 1000 devices. Now I set up this Lawrence Systems demo account and we're going to jump over to that particular network as you sign up for accounts and set these instances up. They all show up in the Unify dashboard. And if you'd like to have multi-tenancy, you have to go over to the system and check the multi-site management box. It does not check by default when you set these up, but it does support that. And for example, when we want to add another site, we can go here, click on this to the site switcher. And you'll see I've already got one called Tom Studio. And if we wanted to add another one, we can simply add a new site. So we'll add Dunder Mifflin if we took them on as a client. Now they're going to show up in the list here and I can now manage their instances as well. And now it's deployed. Deploy is that quick. So here we are in the Dunder Mifflin paper company and we can once again set their Wi-Fi, their devices, and adopt them all in here. Now as far as adopting devices, they do have instructions for how to adopt them by SSHing into the device. They have the inform URL right here, which wasn't obvious when I first signed up. But now that I know where it is, it's pretty simple that you can just copy this and then you can use the set inform to adopt any devices you have into this instance. Now I want to go back over to the site manager because not only is that site in the list when you go to that particular controller, it also automatically adds it to the main site list inside of UI. So as I add more and more companies, they automatically show up here. I've had no issues at all using the Unify Hosted Controller system and auto-adopting everything into here. Now let's talk about Hostify. They're a third party company that will host the Unify Controller for you. So let's go over here and click right on pricing because that's what everyone wants to start. And here in January of 2024, they're charging $99 for 250 devices, and 1,000 devices is $249. As I noted, this is January of 2024. So if it is a future beyond this when you're watching this and prices may have changed, hey, check their website. This is all public-facing. The yearly option does offer you a little discount. So if you want to pay upfront for a year, they do have that as an option. And if you have more than 1,000 devices, they do have custom options that you can contact and work with them on. Now, when you set up a Hostify account, each one of these instances does not have any relationship to Unify other than it's using their software. You can tie it to their dashboard, but you don't have to because they're going to give you direct access to your instance and your controller. They also have support for not only Unify, but UISP and OMATA hosting. Now, here's where you would choose yearly or monthly, and then you have the option to choose a location. This is not a feature you get when you set up with Unify. You automatically go into the Unify Hosted system, but you don't get to choose where. And geography can matter for sometimes regulatory reasons or other reasons such as ping times you may want faster to be in the area or region you're in. And they have a pretty broad amount of locations all around the world. Once you choose your location, you click Deploy Server. And they run through this setup process automatically and very quickly. Now, once it's deployed, you're assigned a random number.hostify.com. And we can go ahead and change this to a label and we'll just call it Tom's server and hit Save. But it's still going to be this random number for the service URL. They're automatically going to have certificate on this. And then they have your set and form URL, which is also just that same number. You can, though, add your own custom domains. So if I have DNS and I want to modify it, so I create a record that points at this, absolutely that is supported. And this is another custom feature they have. So maybe I want it to be Unify.LauranceSystems.com or Unify.CNWR.com. I can create custom domains, put these entries in here, and then all the controllers will point to my domain, including the set and form URL. It's a nice feature they have in here. Now, the next thing is we have a temp user and temp password setup. So I can just go in here and copy this user, click in the copy, expose the password. And the first thing I should really do is go in and change it. But they made this pretty easy. They also have the option if you need to do any type of recovery of your password under their tools here. So you can reset your credentials. Well, let's go ahead and take a look inside the controller itself. And you'll see that I don't have any access points adopted. But I will point out in their system, if we go here to the system and then settings, they already have the multi-site management box check. So I didn't have to check that to be able to add multiple sites. But they do have that same option like you do when Unify hosts it to be able to add a new site, which makes it easy enough to add more clients to this. And they all show up in this view here or to the full overview. If you're running a self-hosting controller, which essentially this is hostify doing this for you, you get these sites overview. And as I said, they can be tied to the Unify dashboard, but don't have to be. Now, a few final notes about hostify is they can give you SSH access or custom firewall rules on request. This is not something in their dashboard. And they do have a lot of experience. They're not new at the unified hosting. They've been doing it for a very long time. Currently, they have over 2,682 Unify network controller instances. And that accounts for 433,000 devices. Yes, that's almost half a million Unify devices being managed by hostify. And they're also working on a new piece of software that is in beta right now. Hopefully to be released maybe by the time you're watching this video that makes adopting them easier. I think this is really cool and I'm looking forward to testing it. And I might do a video on it as well once it gets released. Now, I don't have any issues of all the testing I did with the Unify instance of posting. I think these are both solid options. But which one's right for you? Let me know in the comments down below. Let me know which one you've already went with or which one you're thinking about or if you watched my other video and just did that whole self-hosted thing and you want to maintain the underlying operating system and the Unify controller yourself. Hey, that's a perfectly good option. But so is using hostify or Unify to manage all that for you. 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