FAQ

How is Hestia different from Sweepy?

Sweepy (and similar tools) is subscription SaaS — you pay monthly and your family's data lives on their servers. Hestia is free, MIT-licensed, and self-hosted: you run it on your own server, NAS, or Raspberry Pi, and your data never leaves your infrastructure.

Does Hestia require an account or cloud service?

No. Hestia is fully self-hosted — there's no external account, license server, or telemetry requirement. The only outbound network dependency is optional SMTP for sending invite emails, which you configure yourself if you want it.

Can multiple families share one Hestia instance?

Yes. One instance can host several independent households with no cross-visibility between them — see Features for details. A self-hoster can invite a friend or relative to run their own separate household on the same instance without either household seeing the other's data.

Do kids need their own email address to use Hestia?

No. A "managed profile" has no login credentials of its own — it's switched into via a Netflix-style avatar picker on a shared/kiosk screen, optionally protected by a PIN. A managed profile can get its own email/password login added later if desired.

Is my data backed up automatically?

Hestia uses SQLite, so your entire household's data is one file (./data/hestia.db in the default Docker setup). Back up that file with whatever backup tooling you already use for your server — Hestia doesn't ship its own backup scheduler.

What happens if I lose the first admin account?

There's currently no built-in "recover the very first admin" flow beyond normal password-reset (email/password logins can use forgot-password if SMTP is configured). If you're testing without SMTP configured and lock yourself out, you'll need direct database access to recover — see the Troubleshooting page for related setup issues.

Is Hestia production-ready?

Hestia is early days — actively developed, with core features landing incrementally. Check the GitHub repository for current status before relying on it for anything critical.

How do I report a bug or request a feature?

Open an issue on GitHub.

Can I contribute?

Hestia is MIT-licensed and open to contributions. See the GitHub repository for the current codebase and conventions.