Pro Weather5 Reasons Self-Hosted Weather Software Is a Pain (And What to Do Instead)
Self-hosted weather software like CumulusMX and WeeWX is powerful and free, and the hobbyist community has built impressive ecosystems around both. But if you are honest about the experience of running them day to day, there are real pain points that never quite go away.
This is not a critique of the software itself, which is excellent at what it does. It is a realistic look at the ongoing burden that comes with running it, and a suggestion for a path that avoids these problems entirely.
1. Your site dies when your machine goes offline
CumulusMX and WeeWX need a computer running 24/7. If that machine reboots for operating system updates, loses power during a storm, or its SD card corrupts (a notorious Raspberry Pi failure mode), your site stops updating. You might not notice for hours or days.
The fix is manual: power-cycle the machine, check the logs, confirm the software restarted, and verify the FTP upload is flowing again. If you are on holiday when this happens, your site stays stale until you return.
2. FTP uploads fail in frustrating ways
Both programs upload generated web pages to your host over FTP. FTP is an old protocol and it fails in ways that are hard to debug. A password expires, the host changes the server address, a firewall update blocks the port, the disk on the host fills up, or a PHP version bump breaks your templates. There is no alert when the upload fails, so your public site slowly becomes outdated without you knowing.
3. Your weather history can disappear
Self-hosted software stores data on your machine. If that machine's storage fails and you do not have a backup, your weather history is gone. Years of observations, all-time records, and long-term trends can vanish in an instant.
This is a particularly painful failure mode because weather data is irreplaceable. You cannot re-measure last year's rainfall. The only defence is a disciplined backup strategy, which adds another thing to maintain.
4. You are the system administrator
When you choose self-hosted software, you sign up for the software and for running a small server. That means:
- Applying operating system security updates
- Monitoring disk space and log files
- Managing SSL certificate renewals (if you use a custom domain)
- Debugging configuration issues when something changes
- Recovering from hardware failures
None of this is difficult individually, but it adds up to a constant low-level maintenance burden that never goes away.
5. Your site is hard to share and does not look modern
The default output of CumulusMX and WeeWX looks dated. Community templates like Saratoga or Leuven improve the appearance but add another layer of things that can break. Making the site look good on phones, which is how most visitors will see it, requires additional CSS work that most station owners do not have time for.
The result is a site that works but does not feel like a professional web presence for your station.
What to do instead
There is an alternative that avoids every one of these problems: a fully hosted weather site.
Pro Weather connects to your Davis WeatherLink account and builds a complete, modern website for you. There is no computer at your house, no FTP, no PHP, and no backups to manage. Your site updates automatically every 10 minutes, your data is stored forever, and it looks great on any device out of the box.
You still own your station and your data. You just skip the infrastructure layer.
For a detailed feature comparison, see Pro Weather vs CumulusMX and Pro Weather vs WeeWX. If you are ready to stop maintaining a server and start enjoying your weather data, start your Pro Weather site in about five minutes.