Start9 and Umbrel are no different in their approach here. Both use red notification dots and prompt you to upgrade. It’s your choice, but making the UX simple definitely ain’t the problem. 

Ultimately the reason people bang on about start9 seems to be primarily due to ten31 investing in them and Odell starting to shill them. If you have a real home network, start9 is a complete pain in the ass. 

They even acknowledge it — the next version (0.4.0) is apparently going to fix all the networking issues. I look forward to trying it out. 

I recommend running Umbrel, Start9, Parmanode, Microbolt or whatever in Proxmox either way. Backups become super easy, and you can run more than 1 node in your swanky new PC.