Thank god they reversed course. I’m coming up on needing another NAS and I was not looking forward to digging through alternatives.
I’ve run raw Linux servers, I’ve run UnRaid, and now I have Synology and it’s been the best “set it and forget it” solution yet. Yes, the hardware is overpriced but it works and I’m willing to pay a premium for that.
However, now we know the direction their leadership would like to take, I can't see much of the tech savvy crowd returning to them, given we know they'll find another revenue screw to turn.
But their hardware is also terrible. Their disk stations for consumers had 1G NICs until recently, and still underpowered CPUs. The sales had to decline for them to be convinced to upgrade to 2.5G in 2025. But then they removed an optional slot for 10G in 923+ model (they still would have made money from it, as it costs +$150), so when the industry moves to 10G, you can’t upgrade the component and should buy the whole unit. The construction is plastic.
I have a 920+, and it’s too slow, frequently becomes unresponsive when multiple tasks are run.
They lag, and need to be constantly forced to improve?
Are there any other NASes out there that a) support ZFS/BTRFS, b) support different-sized drives in a single pool, and c) allow arbitrary in-place drive upgrades?
Last I checked, I believe I didn't find anything that satisfied all three. So DSM sits in a sweet spot, I think. Plus, plastic or not, Synology hardware just looks great.
I was looking into a self-contained NAS to keep my local archive of almost 20 years of photos, Synology was always the most recommended solution but this policy was definitely the reason I did not purchase one.
Unfortunately for Synology I will wait to see if it's a policy they stick to or if they might change it again in the future, I have all my backups synchronised to off-site storage (Backblaze and Glacier), so the local NAS was just a nice to have convenience instead of shuffling through different local disks...
For me, it's too late. I've already set up TrueNAS, and I found it a lot more user-friendly than I expected. Particularly now that ZFS AnyRaid is making good progress, I don't see myself going back to Synology.
Too bad. I switched to UGREEN (DXP6800 Pro) will likely stick with them now. It was easy to install an alternate OS (Fedora 42 in my case) on it, and the hardware appears to be very nicely built.
> According to some reports, sales of Synology’s 2025 NAS models dropped sharply in the months after the restriction was introduced.
What did NAS customers purchase instead?
I honestly can’t believe anyone at Synology thought this would turn out differently.
Yet again another company hit by the consequences of being out of touch with their customers and fuelled by greed. Thankfully good alternatives exist, otherwise it would have sent a signal to the industry that this is OK.
Thanks Synology, but it's too late. I have found out TrueNAS and ASUSTOR (which can run TrueNAS if I want to). I'll continue from that path.
Thanks for all the fish, that was an enlightening experience.
OTOH, I wish them luck. They look fine for un-techy folks to store their data locally. Would like them to stick around. Also, competition is always good.
It's a pretty decent product, their browser OS for it is incredibly good and useful, the performance is pretty good and I've stuck extra ram in it, ssd for caching reads/writes (altho I have it disabled for writes).
But after what they've done recently I don't know if I'd use em again.
I know everyone jusy says "build your own!!!11" I used to be like that too I love tech. But sometimes we just want a tool that just plugs in and works, so we can reach our final goal faster.
I definitely learnt that with 3d printing, used to spend so much time fiddling with printer and never really printing until I got a bambu - then the focus was just on printing as much as I wanted, not much having to muck about calibrating each time.
They tried it though - remember that if you are ever trying to buy another. There are people at the company who wanted this and got greedy, and are only backtracking now because it negatively impacted them.
When leadership makes decisions that are so out of touch with their customers it also severely impacts internal morale.
Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work is gone.
My guess is they will continue to lose the most valuable employees unless they replace management with some internally well-respected staff that understands their customers well.
Is there a decent (budget) NAS with 2.5" HDD support? I have like ~30 1TB 2.5" HDD sitting on my shelf and would love to put together at least one NAS with them but a Synology slim is like... 500€? Not even all the disks worth that much
HA HA HA HA HA
I really hope the C-suite that decided this gets no bonus and hopefully a salary cut this year. Stupid, anti-consumer measures like this need proper consequences so they stop happening.
Until then, let's keep boycotting companies with anti-consumer practices.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 77.8 ms ] threadI’ve run raw Linux servers, I’ve run UnRaid, and now I have Synology and it’s been the best “set it and forget it” solution yet. Yes, the hardware is overpriced but it works and I’m willing to pay a premium for that.
I have a 920+, and it’s too slow, frequently becomes unresponsive when multiple tasks are run.
They lag, and need to be constantly forced to improve?
Last I checked, I believe I didn't find anything that satisfied all three. So DSM sits in a sweet spot, I think. Plus, plastic or not, Synology hardware just looks great.
What did NAS customers purchase instead?
So you can't buy 3rd party HDDs --- but Synology can?
Looks likes a blatant FU to the customer was returned in kind.
Unfortunately for Synology I will wait to see if it's a policy they stick to or if they might change it again in the future, I have all my backups synchronised to off-site storage (Backblaze and Glacier), so the local NAS was just a nice to have convenience instead of shuffling through different local disks...
Make your purchasing decisions accordingly.
I honestly can’t believe anyone at Synology thought this would turn out differently.
I just settled for a budget QNAP unit. Been great tbh
If Synology want me back as a customer, they also need to get modern CPUs, 2.5Gb or 10Gb Ethernet and reverse course on H.265 too.
Thanks for all the fish, that was an enlightening experience.
OTOH, I wish them luck. They look fine for un-techy folks to store their data locally. Would like them to stick around. Also, competition is always good.
It's a pretty decent product, their browser OS for it is incredibly good and useful, the performance is pretty good and I've stuck extra ram in it, ssd for caching reads/writes (altho I have it disabled for writes).
But after what they've done recently I don't know if I'd use em again.
I know everyone jusy says "build your own!!!11" I used to be like that too I love tech. But sometimes we just want a tool that just plugs in and works, so we can reach our final goal faster.
I definitely learnt that with 3d printing, used to spend so much time fiddling with printer and never really printing until I got a bambu - then the focus was just on printing as much as I wanted, not much having to muck about calibrating each time.
Don't forgive them, and don't buy Synology.
Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work is gone.
My guess is they will continue to lose the most valuable employees unless they replace management with some internally well-respected staff that understands their customers well.