Hello!
Like many of you, I’m looking to reduce my usage of google services. Starting with emails, calendar, drive and photos. I have seen many alternative, but I’m not sure which one to pick. I have criterias that I don’t think are unusual but I often don’t find the information I’m looking for in their documentation.
So I’m looking for feedback on your experience to help me chose.
Emails I own a domain name I want to use. Being able to have a catch all email would be a plus.
Calendar No special need. As long as I can send invitation to people that are not using the same service it’s fine by me.
Drive I want to store my documents securely. Having a gdoc/sheet equivalent would be appreciated but is not mandatory. I also need to be able to share folders or documents with a link to view them.
Photo I want the solution to automatically sync the photo from my phone to the cloud like Google photos does. I can’t find this information on any service. At least, if it’s not automatic, it should be a single click. Photo sharing should be like drive sharing. I need to be able to create shared albums. Ideally it should have an application that could cast photos to a chromecast, but that may be a lot to ask for!
Backup I want to be able to regularly query the service for any new/updated documents or photos. Then I’ll download them and create a password protected archive to store somewhere. I really want to be able to do that automatically. So the service should have an API allowing that. If none exist, how do you manage your backups?
I know there are great self-hosted solutions, but I’m not ready to do that yet.
So far I’ve seen many providers recommendations for specific services, I could do with one provider for each services, but ideally I’d like to do everything in the same place for a practical reason.
I’ve been looking at Infomaniak or Nextcloud which seems to be a good candidates for me. If someone has feedback to share about them I would appreciate it!
I’m selfhosting my own instance of Nextcloud and I must say my experience has been pretty good. I mainly use it to syncronize my projects between my PCs and I’m using it as a Google Photos alternative.
- Email I have never tried it but I tried Talk and it works really well.
- Calendar I have never tried it but it should work.
- Backup is one of the strong points of Nextcloud in my opinion, it tracks file changes and keeps old versions that you can restore anytime, just install the desktop client, choose what to sync (very important!) and it’s done.
- Drive Nextcloud it’s fine for it but I’ve never extensively tried, you don’t actually have to use the official app to manage your files. I connected Solid Explorer to my Nextcloud and the experience is really good!
- Photos You can use Nextcloud as a Google Photos alternative, although it’s a bit janky: The experience is not flawless because the Android client it’s a little buggy, I have to try many times before it decides to upload my photos.
You should really consider learning how to self host if you have time, Nextcloud does not need powerful hardware to run, I’m literally using an HP mini PC from 2016 that a company was throwing away (it has a 4th gen core i3 and 4GB of RAM, it has no issues running Nextcloud on Ubuntu)
I use Infomaniak and I’m really happy with them even if everything isn’t perfect.
Calendar: nothing to say
Email: nothing to say
Photos: It could be better as for now it’s just about backing up your pictures but you can’t do much else since your pictures aren’t analyzed for faces, objects, … Still it’s what I need and my pictures are safe
Applications: on iOS the application is fine and on Linux too. The only problem is that I have to recreate all my synchronisations after every updates since it’s an appimage and not a flatpak. So I only update it once a year…
I’d really recommend them as they are always improving stuff and their service is way better and cheaper than when I started using them.
If feel like their prices are very cheap, are they really trustworthy?
How do you manage your backups?
Yes they’re cheap but I’ve never had any failure and the few times I had to contact their support they were quite efficient.
They are established in my city and they are a really well respected name.
They are even heating buildings with their datacenters.
I put everything on kDrive and once a year I do an external backup on a hard drive.
For password management, I rely on Proton Pass though. It’s also a company from my country but their reputation is only into the tech world and not with normies.
Good to know thanks! Storing data and selling heating is quite a business plan haha.
For password I’m already using bitwarden and I’m happy with it.
Thank you!
You’re welcome!
disroot.org have all but backup, I think. You have to give a little for larger storage etc, but check them out, they have the right spirit.
The solution should not be one single provider. Use Ente for pictures, maybe Proton* for other cloud storage and Docs replacement, look into a Nextcloud server hosted by another provider for calendar and email. Don’t put all your digital eggs in one walled nest.
*Proton is plagued by a CEO who can’t keep his mouth shut about politics. Look into that and how you feel about it before you sign up. Their VPN is good but I wouldn’t use them also for email to make switching less of a headache - and I don’t think you could use your own domain there anyway.
Ente looks great, thanks for the recommendation!
I’d prefer to manage fewer baskets and save a copy of my eggs somewhere else first. That’s just the first step, if I’m unhappy with a solution I’ll look somewhere else. Or did you have security reasons in mind ?
You can use your own domain with proton and it does support a catch all as well.
Security is one thing. I was more thinking about the pain of having to move everything again when the single provider goes bankrupt or becomes politically intolerable or gets swallowed by the kraken.
Proton drive.
They have similar functionalities as Google Drive including a word processor. And they just recently added a feature to organize your photos into albums.
