Preferably a reasonably-priced provider.
Thanks
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share 1 TB for 5.11 / mo
Nextcloud Hosting | Gratis mit 1GB starten | hosting.de 500 GB for 6.90 / mo
https://www.ionos.de/office-loesungen/managed-nextcloud-hosting 1 TB for 9 / mo
These are reasonably priced. They do offer a bit in terms of what exactly they offer, and how noob-friendly they are to use, but in general these are pre-packaged solutions.
Are you sure you need Nextcloud and can’t just get away with eg. Syncthing?
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You should not. PG also clearly advices against doing so on the website.
The provider will have access to all your data.
If you want to see how stuff like that can go wrong I would advice to peak on the trustpilot of Owncube. Now obviously that could have been done a lot better, but not they will always be able to see your data. It isn’t privacy friendly.
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Worth noting that if you’re using a hosting provider that offers you a pre packaged solution you’re not “self-hosting” any more than you are when using google drive or microsoft onedrive
As @ph00lt0 has already pointed out, if you can’t self-host Nextcloud, you shouldn’t use it.
It technically has end-to-end encryption and encryption at rest, but the former doesn’t work for contacts, calendar, and tasks syncing, and is quite unstable. For that reason, most, if not all, providers don’t support it.
In that case, the provider can theoretically look at all of your data, or, a hacker could gain access to the infrastructure and do the same.
If you cannot self-host Nextcloud, you will have to use other private options for files, contacts, calendar, tasks, etc. syncing.
Yes, your Nextcloud provider will have access to your data, just like Google (gdrive) or Microsoft (onedrive), but I’m quite sure your privacy will be protected, unless you do some illegal stuff. Especially with small(er) providers (e.g. thegood.cloud , webo.hosting )
Of course, you can use it with Cryptomator or as a backup destination (encrypted) if you would like to store some private files there.
That is not how Privacy Guides, or privacy is general works though. We need to use and recommend tools that cannot violate your privacy, rather than just those that choose not to.
And, as I stated above:
This is why it’s essential that the software be private, rather than the provider.
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I agree. But if the only choice is between providers who we know are selling and misusing your data, and those who have different business model, and cannot afford to loose any customer, then I would recommend the 2nd option.
It is similar to Windows guide. There is no privacy with it (especially from 11 and future ones), but not all Windows setups are the same 
And even Ubuntu, which is not recommended by PG is way better than any Windows PC
E2EE cloud storage is more expensive and/or it lacks some features people got used to (document editing, tasks, chat…). So it’s hard to convince google or MS users to switch to e.g. Tresorit. But they might consider hosted Nextcloud, as it has all the same/similar tools.
When hackers gain access to Dropbox servers, they’ll also get all your data. And on top of that, the same data has already been provided to 3rd parties. Yes, security is probably better, but haven’t there recently been report that large part of Azure infrastructure was compromised and even some big business customers’ data was compromised. It also happened to Amazon and Dropbox. And it can happen to private users and their self-hosting setups.
There are many people who are aware their privacy is violated (mainly by FAANGM) and they think nothing can be done. But IMO, privacy is not 0 or 1, it is better choose to trust some Nextcloud provider than to keep storing all your data on gdrive or onedrive. If nothing else, at least in case of lost credentials, you might actually get to real person and prove your account belongs to you. Or that your account won’t be blocked cause their automatic scanning system falsely identified your files as something illegal.
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