Hi there 👋 and welcome to zaidhub.com!
This guide will walk you through setting up your account, connecting securely, and using the different services.
Those services are only available to invited users. If you don't know the administrators of this website personally, then our services will not be available to you. However, we will maintain installation guides and other educational materials available publicly since this website has an educational mission.
When you’re at a remote location, you must use Tailscale to connect to our services.
What Tailscale does
Why use it?
Without Tailscale, you can only reach our services when you’re on our local Wi-Fi. With it, you can securely access all the services from anywhere.
⚠️ Why you can’t reach services without Tailscale
We do not expose services to the public internet. The public web is constantly scanned for vulnerabilities; a small misconfiguration or unpatched app could risk your data. For safety, services are private—typing the URL without Tailscale will fail to load.For this reason, you can only access our services after connecting through Tailscale VPN.
Download and install Tailscale from tailscale.com/download.
Open the app. You’ll see big buttons to sign in with Google/Microsoft/GitHub.
Paste your Tailscale authorization key from the onboarding message and sign in.
Tailnet lock approval (required).
⏳ While awaiting approval: You might see “Connected” to the tunnel, but hub services won’t open until approval is complete.
🔐 Auth key safety
- Treat the key like a password—don’t share it.
- Keys are reusable but expire (typically 3–90 days).
- If the key is expired or invalid, ask the admin for a new one.
🌐 Tip: Exit Nodes
By default, Tailscale only provides private access to the hub. If you enable Use exit node, all of your internet traffic goes out through the chosen node (similar to commercial VPNs). We provide exit nodes you can select after you’re connected. For more details, check the VPN section in the available services.
⚠️ Warning: Do not use an Exit node until the admin confirms your device has been approved. Enabling it early will prevent internet access. Simply set the exit node to None to regain internet access.
We provide a walkthrough (with screenshots) using the Android app to illustrate the flow of using an auth key. Even if you’re on Windows, macOS, Linux, or iOS, the sequence is essentially the same (labels and menu locations may differ slightly).
s.zaidhub.com) while Tailscale is connected.Once you have connected through Tailscale, visit help.zaidhub.com in order to continue setting up your account.
⚠️ Note: help.zaidhub.com will only load after you’ve connected with Tailscale.
If you try to visit it directly from the public internet, the site will not be reachable.
These services are designed to help you explore self-hosting while giving you practical tools for daily use. Here’s why using them is useful:
Controlled Data Handling: While these services do store data (as any digital platform must), this small setup is designed to minimize exposure and prevent leaks. You are still trusting the administrators of this platform with your most private information. For sensitive use, self-hosting on your own server is recommended.
End-to-End Encryption: Some services provide full or partial end-to-end encryption.
Open Source: All software provided is open source. You can inspect the code, understand how it works, and even recreate or improve the services. Transparency means you don’t have to blindly trust a company to manage your data.
Educational Mission: The goal of this platform is to showcase what open-source self-hosted services have to offer. Guides and documentation will show you how to set up these services on your own servers. You can start by using our platform to discover what is out there. Then you will be empowered to make the decision to either continue using our services, or take control of your digital life and host services on your own.
Hands-On Experience: Using these services gives you real experience with open-source tools, secure logins, private cloud storage, and AI chat assistants. You can experiment safely and see how self-hosting can replace commercial services while retaining more control over your information.
In short: our platform lets you learn, explore, and use useful tools in a safe environment, while giving you the knowledge to eventually run your own self-hosted setup if you choose.