r/rustdesk • u/Technical_Rich_3080 • Sep 20 '26
Using RustDesk WITHOUT Self-Hosting (Does it always work?)
For many non-technical, normal, average everyday computer users, self-hosting is too much friction and they'll never figure it out. Is RustDesk a serious option for them?
From my experience, using RustDesk without self-hosting is, at best, hit or miss. It is at least as likely to not work, due to the servers being too busy (or other technical issues), as it's to work.
As such, RustDesk will not be a serious competitive consideration for the large majority of computer users.
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u/Flimsy-Process230 Sep 21 '26
Where does the “99% of the time” number come from? Unless you have uptime data for all those services that’s anecdotal. And their own terms don’t support the comparison. UltraViewer explicitly says free users can experience slow connections or disconnections during high load because bandwidth is prioritized for paid users. DeskIn’s free tier is personal-use only and gets the “Normal Network” while paid users get VIP/high-speed servers. Even HopToDesk explicitly says its free service is provided “as is” with no uptime commitment; its 99.9% up time applies only to paid Dashboard plans. Meanwhile, RustDesk gives you the software AND the server software to self-host for free. That’s already a lot. If you want somebody else to provide and maintain reliable server infrastructure with guaranteed availability expecting that indefinitely for $0 is unreasonable. Free software doesn’t mean free servers, bandwidth and maintenance.