Nextcloud really cannot be recommendion in my eyes.
I myself run 3 servers (of which one hosted by Nextcloud), one myself and one by Hetzner, and I really had my fare share of issues and I cannot say I would recommend it to anyone.
The service is unreliable:
updates are not coordinated, server updates break apps or disable them (even the ones maintained by the core team)
app stability is terrible. Now currently the calendar app is broken again and just misses random appointments in the web view for already a month.
error logs are often vague and unreadable
nextcloud cannot be recommended to be hosted elsewhere because itās lacking proper end to end encryption
selfhosted nextcloud is often set up by others in insecure ways. F.x. often recommended is to use port forwarding on customer routers which isnāt a great idea.
support responses of nextcloud are usually not helpful. Often blaming the set up of the customer whilie this really is to blame to the software of nextcloud. Even hosted versions by nextcloud self are slow and give all kinds of user unfrendly error messages.
back up situation is messy, all kinds of solutions exists but none are fully seemless and complete.
over the years quite a few data corruption incidents happend with updates and none were given good solutions. If solutions were made it in few cases still caused data loss and relied on some cowboy style database scripts.
nextcloud tries to be a solution for everything but canāt seem to focus on their actual core product that still leaves much to be desired even after this got a lot of backlash from the community.
Nextcloud seems to be heading more and more on microsoft integrations. I can see why but it also makes no point for privacy that way. And just becomes yet another slow software package for corporate files. At best a cheaper alternative to MS Sharepoint.
Alternatives exist and I believe PG to be a platform to advice the general public on how to have an easy privacy journey. Not one that involves all kinds of system admin-ing and troubleshooting and complains for services that do not work well and just cause frustration.
This still may be a solution for people who have a lot of custom needs, probably for a company or who like thinkering around but this isnāt a straightforward recommendable solution for obtaining privacy in my eyes.
I have to wholeheartedly disagree. Iām totally a novice when it comes to being a server admin, but I have run Nextcloud on a computer at home for nearly two years now with essentially no issues.
I agree it has flaws, but given the incredible amount of convenience it has granted me and the people around me who use my server, I think it would be extremely disappointing if Pguides chose to remove Nextcloud.
Regarding the stability issues youāve encountered - I use the snap package on an Ubuntu server, which takes a very conservative approach to updates, so maybe thatās why I havenāt had issues.
I also use the snap package. If anything this is worse than the docker image AIO that was later released.
Current issue with random calendar appointments not being visible in the webapp has been open voor more than a month.
I have made my exit plans and in the face of migration myself. I had already off loaded many things over the years but now I will kill the servers this year still.
I use StorageShare from Hetzner, and I have never faced any issues. I even made accounts for my family, and none of them have faced issues till now. Donāt know about other hosts that you used, but Hetzner sends an email saying there will be an update at some time frame, etc., and alerts you before.
I have yet to reintegrate Nextcloud to my TrueNAS server due to an unrelated issue.
Right now I think Nextcloud is the best way to sync photos from iOS that my spouse uses. It is an ok experience, not exactly the best but it works and uploads HEIC format. I was wondering what were you proposing to replace it with (that has multiplaform apps)?
I think Nextcloud is still the best way to sync contacts and calendars unless you count EteSync as a viable alternative. Have you found any other good way move calendars and contacts securely? Proton Calendar is still a no go for me and it cant really sync between other devices.
No matter where hosted they all suffer from the badly rolled out updates and software bugs because of lacking unit testing. I my eyes very immature software development which could potentially also be very risky.
And for my family i wouldnāt want their stuff to be all unencrypted on a hetzner server but thatās me.
As I said i think it can serve some who want to thinker around and fix shit. But it really isnāt recommendable.
In my opinion, solutions you donāt host yourself like proton drive and ente.io donāt even come close to the flexibility and price that a self-hosted Nextcloud instance offers. For mine, I used an old mini pc I had laying around that had 2 TB of storage already in it, and for backups I used an external drive I already had. So essentially for free (aside from negligible electricity costs and the fact that I may have to swap out drives that inevitably die), I have 2 TB of cloud storage that I can allocate as I wish to the people around me who want to use it.
Compare that to using services like proton and ente.io - proton drive at least has a family plan, so for about $250/yr I could have 3 TB documents storage for me and 5 other people, and calendar as well. But I also need around 200 GB of photos for at least me and my partner. Ente.io doesnāt seem to have a family plan, so we would need two 500 GB plans, which is $200/yr. So $450/yr total, and then we still wouldnāt have synced contacts, a replacement for phonetrack, music streaming through subsonic, a tasks manager that syncs over the cloud that allows us to share lists with each other, a cospend replacement, etcā¦ It really is difficult to overstate just how much of a value offer Nextcloud has been for me.
Yeah, all fair points. Thanks for pointing out the ente.io family plans. I think since Iāve just had so much luck with Nextcloud, I would rather keep it listed so anyone whoās tech savvy and up to the task can give it a try. I agree it isnāt for everyone, and Iām sorry youāve had so many issues.
Does anyone have experience with Seafile? Itās also self-hosted and only does files (not like Nextcloud now trying to be the everything app). It also supports āE2Eā although if you want to log in through a browser the server will get your password for 1 hour, so itās flawed as you still need to trust your hoster. For hosting at home it might be a good alternative to Nextcloud though? And then something like Radicale or Baikal for calendar and addressbook?
I agree. I used to self-host NextCloud using Cloudron on a cloud VPS earlier. The system had some weird errors every time someone uploaded a large file. Finding out what went wrong is a big issue cause it would take a lot of time after my 9-to-5 job. Hence, I went online to see if anyone hosted it and came across Hetzner.
I do like Proton but since I already have my email with them, putting all my eggs in one basket did not seem right to me.
And letās be clear here. PG recommendation is currently already to only use this as self hosted solution.
I personally deem the risk of usong proton for this all very low you just gotta keep backups outside proton too. Never allow one party to be able to lock you out.
Iām using Syncthing for private data (docs, photosā¦) as itās way easier for āself-hostingā than NC and hosted Nextcloud for less important data (books, musicā¦). But also for calendar, contacts, bookmarks, tasksā¦ sync. From my experience (hosted) Nextcloud is a good service, even if it lacks E2EE (Iāve been using/testing Cryptomator with NC, itās ok). I agree they might have spent too much resources for less important stuff (apps integration), unlike Seafile or Owncloud, but on the other side, it is something that makes them unique. And it is the best cloud service IMO. Sure bugs are there, I recently discovered that in some server versions enabling Music app blocks deletion of empty folders And Iāve been using Music app to stream my collection to some of my devices. But itās fixed now :d
As a self-hosted option, I would for sure list NC as an option, though it depends on user needs. But maybe also as 3rd party service, as it is more private than the most popular ones (onedrive, dropbox, google driveā¦). NC providers are usually small(er) hosting companies with totally different business model, therefore their price is notably higher, as they donāt make money selling user data. But at the end, itās all about trust, and thatās up to user to decide
Another good example of how Nextcloud does not understand good development practises. If they had unit tests, something like purging calendar and contact changes would have never happened.
And Iāve been using Music app to stream my collection to some of my devices. But itās fixed now :d