I also ended up subscribing to Alby Cloud. I tired to load Alby hub on my Raspberry Pi but kept running into roadblocks. Probably once I get my nextcloud server going, I will take a look into it again.

Also tip for those who are getting started, you can use fountain or primal to get the necessary sats to get started but the with the first channel opening, it might not work. I ended up transferring the sats to the alby shared wallet first then pay it via the extension. I then connected it to my alby account to transfer the remaining sats over. I wish it was a bit more simpler but now I understand why it is a chore.

Also Chris what are your thoughts about using PayPal to buys sats and transfering it over to alby? After my fiasco with River, I forgotten PayPal offers buying Bitcoin as well. I'm a Washington resident too so would that affect me tax wise?