I currently use Proton Drive as my main hub for storing and sharing files. It has been great so far, but at the same time it doesn’t really have advanced functionality like being able to colloborate with people in folders, and their mobile app is very limited in features.
Options that I could use or consider:
Dropbox. I know Dropbox is not the best in terms of privacy and they recently had a breach with their Sign service, but they seem to be a pretty cloud storage provider that has everything you could need, minus the end-to-end encryption part and being open source.
Dropbox with Cryptomator. This would have the limitation of not being able to share files with people through a link, and not being able to view files in the web, which I guess is kinda the point of Cryptomator.
Hetzner Storage Share. This is a service that uses Nextcloud to host all your files and documents.
Options that I am not choosing:
Google Drive (with or without Cryptomator). I deleted all my Google accounts a while ago, and I don’t really want to open one again just for storing files and documents.
Tresoit. Tresorit is a great service, but they have limitations that I didn’t like, which made me turn them down.
Peergos. Peergos is also a great service, but what made me not choose them is that they don’t have an app for syncing files from the desktop to their cloud storage.
I am curious on what you think I should do or consider, and I am also curious on what you use as your cloud storage provider.
I’ve tried tons of clouds and I’m using Hetzner now, the E2EE works well for my archive folders and it’s very compatible with Cryptomator. I don’t use it for collaboration though.
Hetzner looks interesting, especially since I’m recently fascinated by Nextcloud and it’s capabilities.
I have been using Mega (edit: Megasync is the software, Mega the company) for off-site storage, and they recently introduced a VPN on most of their plans.
I use many with rclone… One service stands aside from others. Koofr has native support for rclone crypt, locally encrypted files are placed in the vault and this vault could be accessed via web (or app), that is what Cryptomator can not do. The other interesting feature they have, you may connect OneDrive, GDrive and Dropbox to Koofr account and have WebDAV access to those services (all of them do not have WebDAV support).
I have never heard of Koofr, I’ll have to do some more research on them. Also, I don’t think I’m going to be using any other provider other than the provider I choose. Unless, I keep sensitive and confidential documents in Proton, and other documents that I am free to share with others in the provider that I choose.
What limitation bothered you with Tresorit? I’ve been using it for my personal backup for several years and have found it wonderful, aside from the 20GB file size limit.
The E2EE app has had very bad reviews on the Nextcloud app store for years because people seem to have problems with it, but it has always worked well for me and my 2 archive folders. Those folders only contain old PDFs that I’m not editing and I haven’t noticed any corrupted or lost files.
They have a max upload size of 10GB, and you can only share files that are 2GB in size. I found these to be quite restricting compared to other services.
I actually did consider hosting my own cloud storage at home since I do have a home server that I use for other stuff, but I feel like I wouldn’t trust myself to keep hold of my own files, if that makes sense. Let me try to explain. By trusting a provider, for example Tresorit, you trust them to keep your files safe and encrypted. The provider would have protections in place and audits to backup their arguments on security.
As much as having Nextcloud hosted on a server would be great, I just wouldn’t trust myself to keep my own data safe and protected from other people.
I would like to note that most of my arguments came from this post, since this response kinda answers your question on why I don’t want to use and setup my own cloud storage at home.
Overall, I think I am going to go back over all my options and pick which one is the best. What someone decides to choose, could be different from what someone elses choice is. It all depends on your threat model, and what data do you want to protect or how bad the consequences would be if I fail to protect the data.
Thank you everyone for your input and suggestions, I really appreciate it! I’ll make sure to update everyone on what I end up choosing.
I tried to find something that offers both features (e.g. editing Office and text files in the browser, 3rd-party integrations, “online-only” files shown in file explorer), openness (Linux app, F-Droid app, WebDAV), and privacy (end-to-end encryption, private payment methods like Monero). But no such provider exists and there’s compromises everywhere.
I think the ones that you should “short-list” for your research are:
Dropbox
Filen
kDrive
Mega
Nextcloud
Proton
Seafile
Tresorit
In the end I went with kDrive myself, also because they’re quite well priced, but I really don’t like the lack of end-to-end encryption. I used MEGA before and they were good but I was missing some features.
Cryptee is a great service and I support everything that they do. The only thing I wish they had is the ability to share files, but I understand their reasoning for why they don’t offer the feature.
Peergos creator here. We’re starting to work on a sync client (in addition to the fuse mount we already have). Could you tell me more about your desired sync usage? Do you want uni-directional sync, bi-directional? Offline edits and sync later? Would a local webdav mount be sufficient?
I normally use sync to access and edit my files and folders offline. I feel like a sync client is more integrated with the system as it makes it easier to sync files back to the cloud, rather than having to upload the files manually with their web client. I would most likely want a bi-directional sync as it would just make transferring files to and from Peergos a lot better and enhance the experience. At the same time, I can see uni-directional sync being helpful as you would be able to sync backups to the cloud, but then the backups wouldn’t be downloaded to your system once uploaded.
I personally don’t use WebDAV, but I can see it being useful if the user wants a more integrated solution for syncing their files. One use case I can think of is if your sync client doesn’t support Linux, people could use WebDAV to access their files.