Recently I've been searching for a new 'not google' cloud hosting platform. I quickly zero'd in on NextCloud. NextCloud is a cloud platform that provides much of the same functionality as google. You can configure an email client for it and use it to sync contacts, sync files, a calendar, office docs, and more. NextCloud can be self hosted or you can find a hosting provider. There is also an app for NextCloud at F-Droid.
I don't have a good set up at home for self hosting (Internet access isn't good enough) so I opted for having someone else host it. Under the download section of NextCloud's website there is a section for 'providers' that you can search through to find a good fit for you. In this article I am going to review three NextCloud hosting services I've tried in the last month.
Disroot.org is run by a non-profit organization for the purpose of providing a safe place for people who want to be separated from google or other centralized providers. Disroot is not funded by advertising or any privacy invading practices. All accounts are free, although if you do use them then it would be more than welcome to donate monthly via Liberapay or Patreon. For free you get 4 gigs of storage space. If you donate 15 dollars or more each month via Patreon then you get 50 gigs of cloud space and a number of email aliases.
Disroot offers more than NextCloud cloud storage. Some of the other services that come with your account are:
No. I didn't choose it in the end.
Because of a few things.
First, no Collabora support. Collabora is an online document editing software based on LibreOffice. Really Collabora isn't actually a big deal though, I mostly want it for the cool factor; I rarely use office software as it is.
Second, I worry about what using their service says about me. As you go through their site you see a lot of artistic photos sharing their own messages. Most of those photos make me uncomfortable, though I can't say for certain why. Other people whom I've associated with seem to feel the same way, which makes me think "If I send someone an email from this service and they look up the address it came from, what will they think of me?". This is a very personally specific reason to me however. And I currently have a monthly donation going to them because I like the service and I want to encourage them.
Additionally the price. Google provides 15 gigs for "free" (by using your data to for advertisements) and I would like something at least comparable to that for a price I can justify. The "price" is actually a donation with no contractual agreement. 15 dollars a month is kinda steep for me. This may be worth it if you factor in that you get email and other things with it. But combined with the other reasons it's enough for me to not want to do it.
Pros:
Service Metric is based in the USA. It is a managed-for-you service and they preconfigure it. You can get a trial account that has 1 GB for free. It lasts 30 days and then you need to switch to a paid plan. I spent the least amount of time on this one. I was, however, impressed by a few things. It seemed very stable and it was actually very inexpensive.
I'm confused about how to set up Collabora on their site. It is listed as being 'optional'. It appears that when you sign up you need to sign up for "Cloud Storage Service Beta Test" to get Collabora, which I didn't notice until I began writing this article. So I don't actually know if it works or how.
The NextCloud instance you get is branded with their logo (which honestly is kinda ugly). The NextCloud app will update to the theme that your instance has chosen, including the instance's logo. You have to see it everywhere.
On their website they advertise only a handful of tiers for end consumer cloud hosting. However, after I began my trial, they sent me an email notifying me of other plan options I could choose from that were smaller than the advertised plans. I had actually stumbled upon these offers before the email came to me. Some of those prices are:
That's correct. And really the main reason why is because I think the logo is ugly and I don't want to see it all the time. The other is that the last plan on this list is cheaper.
Pros:
Ah yes, Hostiso. At Hostiso you are the NextCloud admin responsible for adding the applications you want to use and for a newb (like me) it's daunting. They have a small help section (and I mean small) to answer potential questions like "How to set up Collabora in NextCloud".
They do a base price of $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year, and then each 10 GB for $2.28 (I think. I am basing this off of my upgrade options in my management portal). At 100 GB the price comes out to $32.79 USD per year. I'm paying for 30 GB at $16.83 USD per year (which is a few bucks cheaper than the 25 gig tier at Service Metric).
You can choose where (out of their data centers) you want your data hosted. You want it hosted in Germany? You can do that.
Because I am my own admin I can create other user accounts like one for my wife. I also have direct access to the SQL database that my NextCloud instance uses. This scares me a lot (the SQL access, not my wife).
They seem to provide email. If I had registered a domain with my service I would probably be trying it out.
I had to set up an SSL certificate myself, which I could do for free via Let's Encrypt. Hostiso thankfully has a cpanel option for this, making it stupid easy. However I haven't figured out how to auto-redirect from http to https.
If you are trying to set up a cloud hosting account for your grandparents or anyone non-tech-savvy, consider if you actually need to get them cloud hosting (to save yourself some grief). Second, don't set them up on Hostiso, unless you are going to be the admin instead of them and you've been dog food testing your setup for a month and making sure it works well.
NextCloud has a web email client which you can configure with any email that has IMAP. In theory I could use it to connect to my hosted provided email. I don't though. I use it for my existing email client. It works great, except... I can't just leave it open in the background. It times out every so often without telling me. I've opened the dev tools and noticed that the 'sync' pulse it does eventually starts returning a 412 response. I don't know why and the UI doesn't give me any info.
I used to not check the 'stay signed in box' and it would kick me out after I'd been in it for a minute or so and I'd have to re sign in. Again, no idea why. If anyone knows how to fix that feel free to toot at me on mastodon.
I don't really know what kinds of things I should ask Hostiso and what kind of things I should ask the NextCloud community.
Pros:
I went with Hostiso because I like the level of control I have (being a tinkerer). I like that I can make my wife an account on it at no additional charge. I am hoping that I can iron out the performance issues with settings and things. If anyone has any tips please send me a toot on Mastodon, or if you prefer, send me a message on Twitter (links in the side bar, or at the bottom if you are on mobile).