Backups are mandatory no matter what kind of deployment you’ve chosen. no backup? no mercy!
I had a short look at NextcloudPi before i’ve decided to do a “manual” setup. It may be nice, but it adds additional layers of software which i need to understand if i want to be able to troubleshoot on my own when something goes wrong. Doing a manual install may take longer for the first steps, but there are plenty of howtos out there (i used this one for my latest setup) and you learn more about what and why are you doing things.
From my point of view KISS applies to backups as well. It’s not only about having backups, it’s about knowing how they work and what you need to do to restore files. Thats why i use rather simple shell scripts and rsync. Having “some magic” doing things you don’t understand is essentially like having no backup…like:
To be honest: i’ve been working as a “DevOps” for about 20 years, have plenty of experience with linux and system administration in general. This is for sure a better point to start from then for many other people.