[encryptluks2]

Nextcloud is not an alternative to Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud storage provider, and Nextcloud is a software that runs on a cloud server. One you pay for the storage upfront and Dropbox provides some redundancy of the data. With Nextcloud, you could set it up on a single service with no redundancy and easily lose all your data, plus there is administration and maintenance costs.

[mybhslaptop]

You can sign up to many different Nextcloud providers https://nextcloud.com/signup/

NextCloud also sells a device with it preinstalled and easy to use

[encryptluks2]

Those providers aren't competitive in pricing with Dropbox, and even if you have a device with it preinstalled, you are limited to whatever redundancy is built into the box and configuring security/firewall rules, etc. Plus, a lot of residential broadband services limit upload speed substantially, so if you're restoring offsite it could take a very long time.

Dropbox at least has some resiliency distributed across multiple servers.

[Brian_K_White]

I don't understand the objection. Every service or option has some sort of unique differences from each other, and there is always some good and bad points, including dropbox.

Google drive is free and surely pretty well backed up, but requires hoping a service with no customer support process at all just never decides to kill your account, and probably they scan your drive contents just like they do your email, or will some day if not yet.

Onedrive requires creating and using a Microsoft account and who knows how usable it even is from linux (can it do a synced folder on linux or just the browser interdace?).

Other services like Mega or idk what maybe don't have a folder sync feature or something, but are hosted in another country and possibly better protected against invalid take downs or spying.

So nextcloud costs a little more or is a little more work to set up. Yes and in trade for that there are other differences like you are the one in ultimate control of your stuff.

You may not prefer that particular set of trade-offs, but fundamentally, so what? There is always a trade off of some sort including with dropbox.

[encryptluks2]

Google One is $10 a month or $99 a year, includes live support and 2TB of storage.

OneDrive works with rclone, which supports mounting and now bisyncing, and there are third party clients that work just like the official client.

[Brian_K_White]

None of this and other differences disqualifies it as an alternative.

If it's possible to save and access files from any browser, from any location, set up an automatically syncing folder, and selectively share access with others, then you have an alternative to dropbox, and all the other cloud personal storage services. All of which nextcloud can do.

The differences just mean you don't prefer that particular alternative the same way as if you didn't like the color scheme, or more realistically say the need to make a microsoft account for onedrive, or the way google probably scans the contents of google drive etc.

They are all still alternatives with various pros & cons.

Setting up your own nextcloud on a publicly accessible service is no different.

The cons like effort and cost are noted.

The pro is there is no one else in control of your stuff and it's impossible to lose your account due to some age verification, or any other reason like "communiy standards" or billing dispute. The worst that can happen is your hosting provider can drop you, but that is a commodity and there are infinite other hosting providers and methods. Keep your own mirror so you don't care even if the hosting provider deletes everything.

If any alternative to dropbox has to be identical in every detail to qualify, then it has exactly the same problems as well. An alternative actually has to be different in some way or else it's not an alternative but just more of the same, and there is no point in that.

[encryptluks2]

> None of this and other differences disqualifies it as an alternative.

So your friend is in the market to buy a house and tells you about an issue with a particular realtor they are having, and you say...

"I got a great alternative, you can buy a piece of land, rezone it, get permits, go chop down your own wood, build your own house with your bare hands..."

They say to you, I hate my realtor... I don't hate my job. What you're suggesting as an alternative is more like saying that building your own car is an alternative to buying one. They aren't in the same league, and so while it makes sense for people to resell or offer Nextcloud as an option for self-hosted solutions or security, it makes no sense to try to say they are an alternative to Dropbox.

> The differences just mean you don't prefer that particular alternative the same way as if you didn't like the color scheme, or more realistically say the need to make a microsoft account for onedrive, or the way google probably scans the contents of google drive etc.

The differences doesn't mean that I don't like it, in fact I self host a lot of my own solutions. I'm just saying they don't really compare or compete.

Sure, if you want to purchase an array of servers that are distributed across multiple regions and setup a Ceph cluster to distribute storage in a resilient manner then go ahead. By all means do it, but to act like that somehow compares to purchasing a service that already does this is just misleading. After that person spends tens of thousands of dollars to replicate what Dropbox does, then they can finally have an alternative that they never thought of before paying $12/mo. for Dropbox.

[Brian_K_White]

Hyperbole is not a valid argument.

Why didn't you go all the way and talk about declaring your own country on an asteroid? Because obviously what I suggested was to write nextcloud, in assembly, on a cpu architecture you invent.

No one has to write any software, or design or build any hosting system, those already exist. And they are even effortless common commodities. The land is already zoned and cleared and permitted, and the house is already designed, and even already built.

Popping a copy of already written and packaged software on a vps is some percent more work than creating a Google drive account, but that percent is not a million. Even if it's 500% more work, that is still trivial, 5x a few minutes. And even if you for some reason also need an insane availability garantee, it's hardly any more work to then put that behind a cdn, which are another low-effort commodity.

Without even looking, I garantee that there is a pre-made nextcloud droplet ready to go on DigitalOcean that takes mere seconds to activate, and they are surely not the only service provider with an equivalent app-on-a-stick ready to go in a few clicks like that.

And if their own backup offerings and network backbones aren't good enough already, without even looking I bet there is very little effort required to hook that up to CloudFlare.

And this is all while avoiding the probably even easier one-stop-shopping path of just using aws for everything, just because F Amazon.

Selecting a house built to order from a developer's catalog, or even buying land and hiring an architect, is indeed a perfectly exemplary alternative to buying an existing house from a realtor. Minus the stupid hyperbolic nonsense about rezoning, the example was in fact pretty good support of my point. Thank you!

[spicybright]

to add, even if you pay for someone else to host it, you still have to manage it to some degree, unlike dropbox/syncthing.