A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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My journey:
Random stuff --> OwnCloud --> Nextcloud --> syncthing + Radicale
I gave up with the constant changes during upgrades and increasing dependencies for features that we weren't using.
Now my system's lean, light, responsive and just works (on a Pi3)
Prosody's next...
What's wrong with Nextcloud? It's not as snappy as google drive but it's fine for small organisation IMO. I personally really enjoy it.
I'm sorry - I understand it's free, but this is how I feel:
Nextcloud stopped being a fast, reliable file sync tool a long time ago (I mean - was it ever? it's free thats why most people use it).
It’s become a bloated “groupware suite” full of useless Talk, Groupware, AI, and half-finished apps…
while the core sync still chokes on large folders and locks files like it’s 2015.
The Core Problem
PHP-FPM and mod_php are ancient architectures - every request spins up, runs, and dies.
No persistent memory, no connection reuse, and no async I/O, no coroutines, slow as molasses non scalable backend held together only with redis.
Result: slow UI, slow sync, race conditions, and constant errors.
Tons of open GitHub issues about sync bugs, upgrades, and no action from nextcloud.
I'm sick of it. I'm done with it and I will be very direct about it.
Comments and issues and proposed classical PHP solutions are shocking:
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/big_file_upload_configuration.html#configuring-your-web-server Nextcloud suggests you up its ram to 16Gb. 16Gb Carl!
php_value upload_max_filesize 16G
php_value post_max_size 16G
What about 17Gb files Nextcloud? nogo? don't use nextcloud then? Have you ever heard of TUS?
opencloud can run circles around nextcloud now - it is written in GO, much better architecturally, long running, uses connection pooling, does not need redis to survive.
What they (nextcloud) should do: Hyperf + Swoole
Swoole turns PHP into a high-performance async server - persistent memory, connection pooling, non-blocking I/O.
Hyperf+swoole - can rival GOlang.
Hyperf builds on it: native WebSockets, coroutine HTTP, and microservice-ready architecture.
You get live sync, push notifications, and massive concurrency with a fraction of the resource cost.
Add TUS (resumable uploads) and you finally have reliable file transfer on bad connections.
I don’t want bloat. I want reliable sync that just works. I’d rather self-host a lean, fast sync app than manage ten half-integrated apps. They need to switch to Hyperf + Swoole - and bring Dropbox-level sync to self-hosting without the pain.
Nextcloud could fix its image by: Refocusing on sync reliability and performance. Moving core services to a persistent, async engine (Swoole / hyperf, etc). Making “Nextcloud Core” modular - separate entirely from the groupware/ai/talk - I don't fucking need it. Until then, those who care about speed, concurrency, and modern PHP should look beyond the old PHP-FPM world.
Im not the only person - people are sick of this inaction:
This is a good summary. At this point I am too deeply invested in to NextCloud to switch to a different thing, as I've switched my whole family off OneDrive now and I just cba to go through that again. I can handle it being dogshit and I've got used to it's bugs - a form of stockholm syndrome. I suspect a lot of people are similar to me - we use NextCloud because it's the biggest name and has been around forever, not because it's what we want.
Anyway, performance is clearly a problem, and has been since I started on OwnCloud 10 years ago. I wish the devs would do something to improve it but again, having used it for 10 years, I know that they won't. When it finally blows up I'll move to something else I guess.
I'm curious about opencloud. It's flashy, uses go, and has everything that I'm actively using in Nextcloud. The license does make me a little cautious about it though. Apache v2 on the server side is unusually permissive. AGPLv3 on the web ui is cool, but it's also not really helpful if you're not required to publish server changes.
The weaker (permissive instead of copyleft) license alone is a reason to be suspicious of both the project and OP. At this point, it's just telegraphing plans to eventually go proprietary and enshittify.
and I would have gotten away with it if it wasnt for you meddling kids.
NO - but seriously completely gratuitous from my end. I'm fed up with nextcloud.
as to licensing - yeah I didnt even look at it, opencloud was forked from owncloud I figured it is something consistent. I like they use matrix for their chat.
as to enshittification - that is something nobody can predict but I have seen GPL3 went private many times: https://directus.io/blog/changing-our-license-one-year-later or mongo I think was agpl3.
tbh yes - licensing is not something I looked into strongly.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Let's not forget Nextcloud started as a fork for the same reason. The permissive license doesn't stop us from keeping it alive, but it is something to be cautious of.
Can't comment on the license, but I switched to it from NextCloud a few months ago and I've been generally very happy with it for where it is in the development process. It's not perfect yet, but it's also still earlyish.
Fair enough, these are interesting points. I pay for ssd storage and host Nextcloud on it. It use to be quite sluggish but nowadays it's fast enough for my needs so I don't really see any reason to change. I use the office suite, the rss feed reader, memories to sync my pictures, task, and quite a few things actually. I dont need talk much for now but I might. So yeah, it really suite my needs for now.
Interesting. Nextcloud does feel pretty sluggish and probably in need of a major overhaul of the backend. Still, it works quite well .
It needs to be running on postgres and redis. The AIO is your best bet
Nextcloud, tho a very capable package with just about all the bells and whistles one could ever need, is a resource eating beast. LOL
Is it? My instance only has a handful of users, but it runs on a Raspi 4 and RAM or CPU are never a problem
It isn't. It depends on the task and load though. The better the hardware, the faster it is.
Mine runs on some rockchip and 2gb ram h side drivestor gen2 Nas. Sluggish, but works with no troubles so far. Or is indeed not a hardware hungry I stance if you use it for you yourself and maybe a few family members
You use a mesh vpn with a reverse proxy? How does that work?
I run opencloud containers straight on my NAS server running ubuntu LTS, I then expose container ports on tailscale only, and then I route it via nginx proxy manager through my public VPS via tailscale.
I'm not sure. Is it public facing or not? What's the mesh vpn for?
and so should you.
Why should I? I couldn't read it in the post. I use nextcloud because its easy and it has caldav which I use nextcloud 50% for. The other 50 percent is thinking I have a cloud if I someday need one.
I really hate those posts with the "you should..." part. Let people use whatever they want.
[You should] Let people use whatever they want.
:D
You what?
They perdo6ate
Let people use whatever they want.
you can do what you want
Thanks, my lord.
Let people ~~use~~ post whatever they want.
They can post whatever they want. I'm just here, hating it.
I do something similar I use Pangolin (Which is an EXCELLENT project) as a self hosted alternative to cloudflareD tunels. I host it on a public VPS and then thru it tunnel web traffic to my public resources, that way I don't have to expose my IP or have a static. Then I also use netbird as an overlay network not only to access my servers remotely but also to "join" two sites via a VPN (Backup server at my mom's)
That sounds like you use the mesh vpn for managing the server, e.g. ssh, and you've got a server at home and route all traffic via the vps to hide your ip. Do i get it right?
OP's setting sounded like he's exposing his stuff publicly after routing through mesh vpn
correct, it also has the benefit of allowing my IP to change without impacting public or private access.
How come I can't see any comments? It says 17 but I can't see them.
Probably language settings. Depending on your client you need to change those in the Lemmy WebUI. There's something like preferred languages.
yeah tick in both english and undefined (or how it's called), maybe others too
ohoh. thank you. wth I didnt realize I needed to explicitely tick english
weird, I thought its in the default selection. did you maybe register with a different language (I don't know if possible)
I can see comments in the inbox, but not when I click on the post... weird.
my client - I just use the browser.firefox. I also use voyager mobile app and similarly dont see comments.
languages are set to "undetermined".
Thanks for putting this together. I have been dragging my feet on self-hosting NextCloud, and now it looks like that procrastination may just work out in my favor.
One question, can I just run this on localhost and access through my local network instead of using a reverse proxy? If so, how? That's all I need, I don't use a reverse proxy now and would be fine just using a self-hosted VPN to access it when away from my private network. The docs make it seem like there is pretty stringent requirements on having to use a reverse proxy and certs, etc which was the same 'issue' I had with NextCloud. I guess I'm the minority here, but curious if anyone can help answer.
You can absolutely use it without a reverse proxy. A proxy is just another fancy HTTP client that contacts the server on the original client's behalf and forwards the response back to it, usually wrapped in HTTPS. A man in the middle that you trust.
All you have to do is expose the desired port(s) to all addresses:
# ...
- ports:
- 8080:8080
...and obviously to set the URL environment variables to localhost or whatever address the server uses.
Thanks!!!
Good that you added that security disclaimer
They are currently adding calendar support, which is the most feature for me. We are looking for work it’s integration.
I’d be more interested in finding a project that is not folder structure based like all these tend to be, but instead the files would be managed by metadata/attributes (and of course based on these you could still present the files in a classic folder structure when needed). So more of a database approach like in many Document Management systems, f.ex. M-Files.
After extensive looking the only selfhosted one that I can find that fits the bill is Seafile (latest update) which has a metadata based file storage function. Bear in mind setting up docker compose is a PITA but once you get it working (subject to license restriction - only 3 on free 'pro' tier) it works great.
Only other option that hits the same is the software I'm trying to replace: SharePoint (shudder). As much as Microsoft sucks the document libraries with columns are blooming powerful when combined with power automate. Good luck hunting!
This is awesome, I want it. But it's way beyond my technical level. I wish there was a Proxmox helper script.
Interesting. Nextcloud does feel pretty sluggish and probably in need of a major overhaul of the backend. Still, it works quite well .
Looks interesting, written nicely! Gonna subscribe via RSS :)
If all you want is file sharing, like the blog post author wants, I don't understand what's wrong with something like a plain old SFTP server.
I'm not aware of an SFTP client that works like the cloud drive connectors. Do you know of one that monitors local files/dirs for changes and automatically sends them? Or polls the server for changes and downloads then (if they're on the allow list)? Keeps versions?
If literally all you're doing is occasional file transfers, sure, SFTP is easy. That's not how most people use cloud drive clients.
For me and my group, Nextcloud works fine and fast. We do more than file sync and share.