Cryptpad vs NextCloud: the anti-Google.

Google docs is so toxic, because it fingerprints your writing style and keyboard mannerisms, to permanently and maliciously identify other new accounts as you.  [1]  They will claim this is to show you “relevant ads”, but we’ve documented numerous times their contracts with governments to mold society’s opinions and jail users. [2][3]

In order to make sure they can maliciously identify you for profit, Google docs will not display correctly, unless you disable aggressive fingerprint blocking techniques.  For example Brave browser on “Strict Fingerprinting” will cause Google docs to be unreadable.

But you can ditch the tyrannical dystopia with Cryptpad or NextCloud.  BOTH of these are great for team collaborations, and we can add email and chat to both of these.  This is open source software that’s run on a VPS (virtual private server), aka your own tiny cloud.  Let’s compare the pros and cons:

Pros of Cryptpad:
--end-to-end-encryption on shared documents
--Less resource intensive, you can have a smaller VPS and save money

Cons of Cryptpad:
--Focus is on docs, it can do other stuff, but it’s not really focused on it
--It has to be in a web browser, no apps to download
--Hypothetically the server admin could spoof the whole website to phish incoming decryption passwords, but this true for ALL web browser services.

Pros of NextCloud:
--Direct integration with to-do lists, calendars, email, and Video chat integrations make it great for business teams.  (Our Cryptpad setups for have email and chat too, its just a different panel)
--Great for documents and a variety of other files
--open source mobile apps

Cons of NextCloud:
--No end-to-end encryption.  Much less secure than Cryptpad
--Zero protection from the cloud host
--Takes more resources and therefore costs more to run
--Requires optimization for speed

In general, we recommend Cryptpad for smaller businesses or individuals, and NextCloud for larger teams.  Simplified Privacy is proud to offer setups for either, jammed packed with email and chat on your own VPS.  You pick the domain name, you pick what kind of chat (XMPP, SimpleX, ect).  And you get handed over ALL credentials (root access), which you can change afterwards.   See some pictures: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/ 

 What are your thoughts on office365? 

 Not AS BAD as google docs, but still horrible.  Still data collection.  But not as malicious use and intent.  consider switching to Free and open source =) 

 I need to try Cryptpad, for sure, but I have definitely found NextCloud to work well. Self-hosting it and using LibreOffice and Collabora to edit documents. I also have my Joplin notes backed up, encrypted, to my NextCloud. 

 How did you dealt with Joplin's encryption? 

 I have heard good things about Cryptpad but prefer a classic cloud aporoach. What I find really strange about NextCloud is not having e2ee. You can always encrypt on your device using #cryfs or #gocryptfs and then send to the cloud which in fact is safer for docs are stored encrypted, but I still prefer e2ee to be part of the cloud solution 

 If you run nexcloud on your server with encrypted filesystem, uploading files over encrypted connection. I suppose it's 99% of fully e2ee solution. Good enough for majority of cases. 

 Nextcloud has experimental e2ee right? 

Nextcloud is too bloated and slow to be useful anymore.