Self-Hosted Dropbox Alternatives

  • Syncthing is fantastic, and is mostly private. With a little effort, you can make it completely private by setting up your own discovery and relay server (though the docs on how to do that could really be improved).

  • If you want to try nextcloud use the nextcloudpi project. It takes care of everything you need to set it up.

  • I use seafile. The docs are so so, the support is not great but the product did not failed once for two years (with my server being on linux (docker) , clients on linux, windows and android)

  • If you are looking for a commercial (not opensource) self-hosted dropbox alternative, FileCloud (https://www.getfilecloud.com) is great. It comes with great support and has clients for windows, mac and linux.

    Full Disclosure: I work here.

  • I have been a very happy user of Syncthing over Wireguard (connecting all my devices back home). Adding to that a VM of "OpenMediaVault" for NAS/Backup, PiHole to catch what Ublock misses, and music streaming via FunkWhale, I have managed to host a good majority of my own data.

  • Is there anything that has a client for Linux, Mac, and iOS? Not just a website, but a dedicated app.

  • A Synology NAS + Synology Drive has replaced Dropbox for me. Drive isn’t quite as polished, but I have effectively unlimited space, and it’s more private.

  • What about not fully Dropbox alternatives, but simple solutions to have a backup of files online and sync those files with different computers?

  • For those of us that have the same aversion to setting up an entire web server for a simple browser-based access to their files as I have, I recommend also having a look at https://filebrowser.xyz

    I have an instance running at home (reachable only via VPN) that simultaneously syncs the files via Syncthing, and the combination of the two is surprisingly effective.

  • Adding to this this project currently in beta, a simple self-hosted private Dropbox with E2EE: https://www.duple.io/en/