The maker of Home Assistant just renamed its paid remote service. Home Assistant Cloud is now Home Assistant Link. The reason, in its own words: “Big tech ruined the cloud” [1][2].

“We hate clouds,” founder Paulus Schoutsen told The Verge [3].

The big picture:

The word “cloud” now means rising fees, outages, and data harvesting, Nabu Casa wrote [1][2].

The real fight is over where that rent goes. Vendors are moving fees off digital content and onto hardware people already bought.

Nabu Casa draws a hard line. Its Link service is optional and has no lock-in; a home keeps working if the fee is cancelled [1][2]. A big-tech cloud, by contrast, is required and walled off [2].

Schoutsen points to blunt examples. Nest switched off the cloud for early thermostats. Weber shut down the servers running the June Oven. “Now you have a dumb oven that cost $1,500,” he said [3].

What strikes me here is that vendors are naming the tinkering tax out loud. This desk has long argued that “free” self-hosting is only free if your hours cost nothing. Now the sticker buys the box, and the plan buys the right to keep using it.

By the numbers

  • $6.50 a month — Home Assistant Link: The optional remote plan keeps local hardware working even if it is canceled [3].
  • 60% — Nonprofit profit share: The share of Link’s profit that funds the Open Home Foundation, Home Assistant’s parent group [3].
  • 2.7 million — Active home installs: The estimated base running Home Assistant, a tiny slice of the smart home market [3].
  • 90 to 64 days — Cert lifespan: Let’s Encrypt cuts the free security certificate (cert) renewal window on February 10, 2027, dropping to 45 days by 2028 [4][5].

What I’d watch:

What I am watching next is upkeep. The self-hosted maintenance bill is being repriced at the same time.

Let’s Encrypt’s shorter windows mean a self-hosted server renews its security cert far more often [4].

Modern tools ask the issuer when to renew, and do it unseen. Older setups that hardcoded a “renew 60 days out” rule will soon break. That number was picked for 90-day certs, and it is wrong for 64 [4][5].

  • The renewal cadence: Cert lives drop from 90 days toward 64, then 45. The safe point is now about two-thirds of the life, not a fixed day count [4][5].
  • The ease trend: Home Assistant 2026.10 added 15 apps, a one-click hookup for artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, and swapped its map to local tiles after the old provider demanded a key [6].
  • The rent spreading: Cameras that save no video without a plan, and appliances bricked by retired servers, show the same rent model [3][7].

Schoutsen wants a plain label on the box, saying whether a device needs the cloud. Nabu Casa is building a list of ones that do not [3].

The catch

The part I keep circling is how little actually changed for Home Assistant users.

The Verge called the rename “mostly symbolic,” and the $6.50 fee still stands [3]. Nabu Casa is giving nothing away.

The local path is not a price cut either. It is a swap. A monthly cash bill becomes a bill paid in hours, hardware, and power. This month, that bill went up when the cert windows shortened [4][5].

The tech also breaks for reasons outside the user’s control. A map provider demands a key, or a cert issuer changes its rules [4][6].

Not everyone wants to run a server room. Home Assistant sits in about 2.7 million homes, a rounding error next to Google and Amazon [3].

At a glance

  • The Big Shift: The maker of Home Assistant renamed its paid remote service to Home Assistant Link on October 2, declaring “Big Tech ruined the cloud.” The $6.50 monthly price stays. The point is the argument: cloud access has become a recurring rent on hardware people already own.
  • Why It Matters: Tech rent is spreading from digital content to physical devices. Cameras stop recording without a plan, and ovens stop working when a vendor turns off a server. The box price no longer buys true ownership.
  • What I’d Watch: Whether the hours spent on the “own it yourself” path keep rising while cash bills rise on the corporate side.
  • Cert renewals: Let’s Encrypt cuts free cert lives from 90 days to 64 on February 10, 2027, then 45 days by 2028. Automatic tools absorb it; hardcoded schedules break.
  • Local-first tooling: Home Assistant 2026.10 ships one-click AI setup and local maps, steadily cutting the hours a local server takes.
  • Vendor hardware plans: The same rent model is reaching cameras and appliances, where a good device dies when a server shuts down.
  • The Catch: The rename is symbolic and the fee remains. Running a smart home locally is not free. It swaps a cash bill for an upkeep bill, and that bill just went up.

Related reading

Sources

[1] Nabu Casa, “Cloud becomes Link,” 2026-10-02 — https://www.nabucasa.com/news/2026-10-02-cloud-becomes-link [2] Home Assistant, “Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we’re renaming ours,” 2026-10-02 — https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/10/02/big-tech-ruined-the-cloud-so-were-renaming-ours/ [3] The Verge, “Home Assistant says ‘Big tech ruined the cloud, so we’re out’,” 2026-10-02 — https://www.theverge.com/tech/1003936/home-assistant-says-big-tech-ruined-the-cloud-so-were-out [4] Let’s Encrypt, “64-Day Certificate Lifetimes Coming Feb 2027,” 2026-10-07 — https://letsencrypt.org/2026/10/07/64-day-certs [5] Ars Technica, “Let’s Encrypt cuts certificate lifetimes to 64 days starting February 2027,” 2026-10-08 — https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/lets-encrypt-cuts-certificate-lifetimes-to-64-days-starting-february-2027 [6] Home Assistant, “2026.10: You are here,” 2026-10-07 — https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/10/07/release-202610 [7] Arlo Community, “New Arlo Subscription Plans and Features,” 2026-09-15 — https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Secure/bd-p/en-arlo-secure