I gotta say, upon closer inspection Yunohost looks way more elegant and complete a solution than I was picturing. Figured it'd mostly be premade apps ready to install but there's also built-in LDAP + email, let's encrypt certificates, integrated security features, the list goes on and on. If the execution is even remotely as smooth as the documentation suggests, Yunohost sounds great!
Yeah YunoHost is extremely awesome. I use it to host my Mastodon and Lemmy instances. It’s just a little unfortunate that until Debian 12 is supported, their supported Lemmy version is stuck at 0.16.7. So if you want to set up an Lemmy instance today YunoHost might not be ideal.
Hopefully they can get Debian 12 and latest Lemmy support working without any roadblocks.
The lack of image uploading in Lemmy via Yunohost was a deal breaker for me unfortunately. I am just slightly tech savvy and I found the ansible instructions easy enough to follow. I wrote a guide here in case anyone is interested: https://novakeith.net/2023/06/14/setting-up-lemmy-on-a-digital-ocean-droplet/
But on the whole, Yunohost is great for me for trying new apps and getting a feel for them. If I need more flexibility or don't want the overhead, I take what I learned and usually figure out how to install <x> app on a separate VM
It's one of those tools that's in a weird niche. If you need to use it you probably shouldn't be exposing services to the internet. If you're trying to learn it's not going to teach you much. If you don't need it you won't use it anyway.