Date: 2024-12-22
Cloud apps are the modern way to collaborate online that anyone can learn. I used to use DropBox before it enshittified, both for myself and working with friends. Luckily there are open source alternatives, and I tried a bunch since.
NextCloud is the biggest and most famous of them. There's widespread support, including an extension repository. Files can optionally be encrypted on the server side. It can be set up on a shared hosting account, being written in PHP and MySQL(?) but it's too large and slow to work well that way. So is accessing your account from the mobile app. Worse, two different instances stopped letting me upload files one day, with no recourse, and nobody seems to have heard of this issue.
Agora-Project is a much lighter alternative from France, also based on PHP and MySQL but far easier to run on cheap hosting. There's an official app in the Play Store, but the web user interface is very light and mobile-friendly, if super-quirky. It can edit plain text and HTML files right in the browser and has unusual features built in, like microblogging and a forum, but no encryption. Sharing files involves creating a public workspace with guest access; Agora is clearly designed for teams, not individuals.
Last but not least, CryptPad is another French project: an end-to-end encrypted cloud with OnlyOffice integration out of the box, on top of other useful apps like editors for code and diagrams. All of them support real-time collaboration, and other file types can be at least previewed if not edited. CryptPad looks nice and is fun to use; the web UI loads very slowly on my elderly tablet, but runs fine after that. On the desktop or a newer smartphone, it's snappy enough.
All three can handle web bookmarks and image galleries out of the box; Agora-Project and CryptPad allow group chats too (the latter only while editing a document). Last time I checked, NextCloud didn't have team features built in, but did have ActivityPub support.
It's worth adding that DokuWiki can also be used as a poor man's cloud of sorts where nothing else is an option, but that's a desperate measure.