ProxMobo

A mobile management layer for Proxmox VE, honestly reviewed. What you actually get, what’s behind the paywall, and whether you need it.

TL;DR

• What it is: A proprietary iOS app for monitoring and managing Proxmox VE — your virtual machines and LXC containers from your phone, not from the web UI.
• Who it’s for: Homelab owners and self-hosters running Proxmox VE who want to check node health, restart a VM, or open a terminal without sitting in front of a browser [1].
• Cost savings: Proxmox VE itself is free and open-source — ProxMobo adds a mobile layer on top. Pricing for the app is not publicly listed on the website; the App Store is the source of truth for current pricing.
• Key strength: Direct iOS access to Proxmox’s API — resource monitoring, VM/container control, noVNC, and a native terminal emulator — without needing a third-party SSH client or a browser-based reverse proxy [1].
• Key weakness: Proprietary, iOS-only, zero open-source component, no Android support, and the most useful features (VNC console, terminal) are locked behind a premium tier. Data on independent third-party reviews is extremely sparse.

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What is ProxMobo

ProxMobo is a third-party iOS application for Proxmox VE — the open-source type-1 hypervisor that runs virtual machines and Linux containers on bare metal [3]. Proxmox itself is a Debian-based platform that exposes a full-featured REST API and a web interface at port 8006. ProxMobo wraps that API into a native iOS app.

The project has no GitHub repository, no open-source component, and no community edition in the software sense. The developer also ships two other iOS companion apps — one for Uptime Kuma and one for Plausible Analytics — which suggests a solo or very small team focused on building iOS management tools for popular self-hosted services.

To be direct about the category: ProxMobo is not itself a self-hosted tool. You still run Proxmox VE on your own hardware, as you would without it. ProxMobo is the remote control. Proxmox VE is the machine.

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Why People Choose It

The Proxmox web interface at https://your-server:8006 works fine in a desktop browser, but it is a poor experience on a phone. The panels are dense, the tables don’t scale, and VNC console access from Safari is unreliable. ProxMobo exists to close that gap [1].

The core case is: you’re away from your desk, a VM crashes or a node overheats, and you want to check on it and restart whatever needs restarting from your phone. Proxmox’s own mobile story is nonexistent — the company makes a hypervisor, not a mobile app. Third-party apps like ProxMobo fill that void.

Source [3] describes how Proxmox becomes the backbone of a home lab — managing VMs and LXC containers across multiple nodes, with a cluster interface giving a unified view of all resources. Once you’ve built that, keeping tabs on it remotely becomes a real need. Checking CPU spikes, node temperatures, or cluster task queues from a phone during off-hours is the exact use case ProxMobo targets.

The alternative without a dedicated app is one of three things: a full Proxmox web session in a mobile browser (painful), an SSH session in a client like Termius (functional but raw), or a Tailscale or VPN connection followed by the above. ProxMobo replaces that workflow with a structured interface built for the Proxmox API specifically.

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Features

Based on the official documentation [1]:

Free tier:

• View and manage VMs and containers across your Proxmox cluster
• Monitor CPU usage, memory usage, and other system resources per node and per VM/CT
• Start, stop, and reboot VMs and containers
• Temperature monitoring for cluster nodes
• Browse cluster tasks

Premium tier:

• Access Proxmox VE VMs and containers through noVNC (the graphical console)
• Access Proxmox VE nodes, VMs, and containers through a native terminal emulator

Setup and connectivity:

• Connects directly to your Proxmox VE API endpoint via IP or domain name [1]
• Supports HTTPS (Proxmox default) and HTTP [1]
• Default port 8006, or port 443 if you’re routing through Cloudflare Tunnel [1]
• Authentication via Proxmox username, password, and realm (Linux PAM standard authentication is typical) [1]
• Supports multiple server connections — you can add more than one Proxmox instance [1]

The noVNC and terminal emulator features in the premium tier are the ones that matter most for real management work. Read-only monitoring of CPU and memory is useful, but being able to open a console to a VM that’s lost network — or SSH directly to a node — is what turns a monitoring app into an actual management tool.

There is no documented REST API for ProxMobo itself, no webhook support, no scripting layer, and no web interface — it is entirely a mobile app. If you need automated alerting, that belongs on the Proxmox side (or in a separate tool like Uptime Kuma) rather than in ProxMobo.

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Pricing

Pricing data is not published on the ProxMobo website. The app is available on the iOS App Store and uses a freemium model — a free base tier with premium features unlocked via a separate purchase or subscription. The split is clear from the docs: basic monitoring is free, VNC console and terminal access are premium [1].

What this means practically:

• If you want to check VM status and resource usage from your phone: free.
• If you want to actually do something meaningful — open a console, run a command on a node, fix a broken VM — that’s the premium tier.

For comparison, the main alternative approaches have different cost profiles:

• Browser-based Proxmox web UI on mobile: free, always, but painful to use.
• SSH client (Termius, ShellFish): $0–$30/year depending on tier and client, works for any server.
• Proxmox built-in mobile experience: does not exist as of this writing.

Because App Store pricing changes and varies by region, check the current price in the App Store directly before making a decision. Pricing data was not available from the website scrape for this review.

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Deployment Reality Check

Setup for ProxMobo is straightforward — there is nothing to deploy. The complexity is on the Proxmox VE side, which you’ve presumably already handled [1][3].

What you need to connect ProxMobo:

• A running Proxmox VE instance accessible from your iOS device’s network [1]
• Your Proxmox server’s IP or domain name (not including port or scheme in the host field) [1]
• A Proxmox user with API access — the root@pam account works but creating a dedicated read+manage user with appropriate permissions is better practice [1][2]
• If accessing from outside your LAN: a VPN (Tailscale, WireGuard) or Cloudflare Tunnel pointed at port 8006 [1]

What can go sideways:

The biggest practical issue is remote access. Proxmox’s web port (8006) should not be exposed directly to the internet. If you want to use ProxMobo outside your home network, you’ll need either a VPN or a tunnel. The docs mention Cloudflare Tunnel (port 443) as a supported path [1], which is a reasonable approach but adds another piece of infrastructure to manage.

Self-signed certificates are the default for Proxmox installs. iOS has become stricter about certificate validation in recent years. If ProxMobo doesn’t handle self-signed certs gracefully — or if it does but requires you to install the CA on your device — that’s friction the docs don’t fully address. This is a known pain point for any app connecting to homelab Proxmox instances.

There are no third-party reviews with detailed setup walkthroughs specifically for ProxMobo at the time of writing. The XDA beginner’s guide to Proxmox [3] and the NAKIVO installation guide [2] both cover the Proxmox VE setup thoroughly, but neither mentions ProxMobo. The official docs [1] are brief: a single page covering the connection form fields. If you hit a problem, you’re primarily relying on the developer’s email (listed on the site) and your own troubleshooting ability.

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• Native iOS experience. Beats the Proxmox web UI in any mobile browser, which scales poorly and handles VNC inconsistently.
• Covers the full management surface for typical homelab tasks: status checks, starts/stops/reboots, temperature monitoring, task logs [1].
• Premium VNC and terminal access are genuinely useful — these are the features that turn monitoring into management [1].
• Multi-server support — useful if you run more than one Proxmox node or cluster [1].
• Developer builds companion apps for the self-hosted ecosystem (Uptime Kuma Manager, Lens for Plausible), which suggests familiarity with the target user base.
• No data passes through a third-party server — the app talks directly to your Proxmox API endpoint, so your credentials and resource data stay local.

Cons

• iOS only. No Android version listed or mentioned anywhere on the site. Android users are entirely out.
• Proprietary. No source code, no community contributions, no ability to audit what the app does with your Proxmox credentials.
• Key features are paywalled. The free tier is read-heavy; actual management capability (console, terminal) requires purchasing premium.
• No independent third-party reviews found. Every major claim in this article is derived from the developer’s own documentation. That’s a yellow flag — not a red one, but it means there’s no external validation of how well it actually works in practice, what bugs exist, or how the developer handles support requests.
• 0 GitHub stars, no public repository. There’s no community signal to gauge active development, bug frequency, or long-term viability.
• Self-signed certificate handling is undocumented. Most homelab Proxmox instances use self-signed certs; whether the app handles this smoothly is unclear from available sources.
• No alerting or push notifications documented. A monitoring app that can’t alert you when a VM goes down is a dashboard, not a monitor.

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Who Should Use This / Who Shouldn’t

Use ProxMobo if:

• You run a homelab on Proxmox VE and regularly want to check on it from your phone without wrestling with the web UI in Safari.
• You’re already on iOS and spend more time managing VMs from your phone than from a desktop.
• You want a quick restart or a terminal session without spinning up an SSH client and remembering which IP is which node.
• The premium tier price feels reasonable relative to the time you’d spend fighting the browser-based alternative.

Skip it if:

• You’re on Android. There’s no version for you.
• You want open-source and the ability to see exactly what’s happening with your Proxmox credentials. A proprietary app with API access to your hypervisor is a trust decision.
• Your Proxmox management needs are complex — multi-datacenter, cluster migrations, Ceph storage management. This is a monitoring and basic control app, not a full Proxmox GUI replacement.
• You already have Tailscale or a VPN and a comfortable SSH client workflow. The marginal value of ProxMobo over ssh root@node1 -t htop depends entirely on how much you value the native interface.
• You need alerting. If a VM going down at 3am should wake you up, configure that at the Proxmox or Uptime Kuma level — ProxMobo doesn’t appear to offer push notifications.

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Alternatives Worth Considering

For mobile Proxmox management:

• Proxmox web UI in a mobile browser — free, always available, but the UX is genuinely poor on small screens.
• SSH client (Termius, ShellFish, a-Shell) — $0–$30/year, works for Proxmox plus every other server you run. More flexible but less structured.
• ProxMox in a desktop browser via Tailscale — if you already run Tailscale, the full web UI on an iPad over Tailscale is usable and free.

For Proxmox management broadly:

• Proxmox VE native web UI — the official management interface, free, full-featured, just not mobile-optimized [3].
• Cockpit with Cockpit-Machines — open-source web-based server management that includes VM management, accessible on mobile browsers more cleanly than Proxmox’s UI.
• Portainer — if you’re primarily managing containers rather than full VMs, Portainer is open-source, has a cleaner mobile UI, and covers Docker and Kubernetes in addition to Proxmox LXC workflows.

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Bottom Line

ProxMobo does one specific thing: it gives iOS users a native interface to a Proxmox VE instance they’re already running. If you’re deep enough into self-hosting to be running Proxmox, you’ve already cleared the hard part — ProxMobo just makes the mobile side less painful. The basic monitoring is free; the useful management features (VNC, terminal) cost extra. The absence of any third-party reviews means you’re taking the developer’s word for how well it works, and the iOS-only constraint cuts out Android users entirely. That said, the feature list [1] matches exactly what someone managing a homelab from their phone actually needs, and the direct API architecture keeps your credentials off third-party servers. For Proxmox homelab owners on iOS who check on their nodes regularly, it’s worth the App Store price. For everyone else, the alternatives are workable enough.

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Sources

1. ProxMobo Docs — Setup & Connection — proxmobo.app. https://proxmobo.app/docs/tutorial-basics/connection
2. NAKIVO Team — “How to Install Proxmox 8: Setup Tutorial” (Updated January 24, 2025) — nakivo.com. https://www.nakivo.com/blog/proxmox-install/
3. Ayush Pande, XDA Developers — “A beginner’s guide to setting up Proxmox” (Updated October 16, 2024) — xda-developers.com. https://www.xda-developers.com/proxmox-guide/

Primary sources:

• ProxMobo official website: https://www.proxmobo.app
• ProxMobo documentation: https://proxmobo.app/docs/intro