For chat, consider setting up your own Murmur server [1] and use Mumble to do voice and text chat. It is not has happy-clicky as Discord, but the sound quality is great and you can have thousands of people on a tiny VM. It is very easy to deploy. It looks like people have created ansible playbooks for this too. [2]
Mumble is pretty crummy for text chat from my experience. I still use it for voice on a fairly frequent basis, but having very ephemeral text logs (on client restart), and a lack of pinging users makes it a huge pain to use for text.
Yeah, I prefer IRC too. I ended up shutting down all my IRC servers. Most folks moved to Discord/Slack and it just wasn't worth the effort to maintain them for my use case.
I only suggest murmur / mumble because they are super east to set up.
A coworker suggested matrix, but I have been fine with murmur/mumble for my use cases. If a lot of people needed text chat, I would crank up the ol' IRC daemons and put TheLounge in front of it.
How are these alternatives "privacy-friendly"? I'm pretty sure Opera, Vimeo and many others are monetized and include advertising. Also, why does something like Google Authenticator need a "privacy-friendly" alternative when it doesn't even need Internet connectivity to work? Don't get me wrong, we should put down Google products, but are the ones listed here really any better for privacy and security?
The first guarantees that I'll know if they try to sneak something in (they're good at labeling potentially undesirable features), and the second just makes so much sense that I don't know why Google Authenticator doesn't do it (it might now, but it didn't when I last used it).
Also, I just like how andOTP looks more than Google Authenticator, but that's entirely subjective.
That being said, the fact that andOTP _can_ exist really keeps other apps in line. So even if you don't use an alternative like andOTP, you still benefit from it existing.
Looking at AirTable's Privacy Policy, it does not appear that they have any interest in protecting privacy. They have a line in their "How We Share Your Data" section, that reads:
* With others for any legitimate business purpose, provided the information is aggregated and anonymized.
Please consider adding rsync.net as a privacy friendly[1] alternative to gdrive, etc.
We just added the 'rclone'[2] binary executable to our (very strictly limited) environment which basically allows you to send/recv to and from any cloud service.
So, not just a good alternative to google drive (et. al) but a very useful "cloud storage swiss army knife" in general.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I _love_ the idea of rsync.net but the pricing just cripples it. $40/TBmo up to 10TB, $30/TBmo up to 100TB or $20/TBmo beyond that. And you have to buy the storage up front and pay for it even if you don't use it.
To put this in perspective, I can get a Hetzner SX62 dedicated server for $72 USD/month. This comes with 4x10TB HDDs which I can put into RAID5, giving me 30TB usable storage. It also comes with an unlimited gigabit pipe, RAM and a CPU. In total, this costs $2.4/TBmo.
If I want duplication in multiple countries (which isn't included in rsync.net's base price?), I can buy a second one, increasing my costs to a horrendous $4.8/TBmo, still a quarter of the cheapest price I can get at rsync.net.
I get the "I don't want to manage the hardware" argument but 4x (arguably 8x) is way too high a cost for me.
I'm aware of the Attic/Borg plan and I really like the idea but it's only close to competitive at the highest 100TB+ pricing ($5/TBmo).
First, we are going to continue to slowly decrease the price per gigabyte, as we have these past 14 years - and as always, existing customers just get grants, or gifts, of extra space so that their price per GB always drops to match our current pricing for new customers.
Second, just to clarify: "And you have to buy the storage up front and pay for it even if you don't use it." - please note that:
We can increase the size of your filesystem at any time, with no downtime involved - so there is no need to overbuy in anticipation of future usage.
Further, you are granted a +10% grace at all times, so you always have some room to grow.
Finally, the system automatically emails you as you get close to your limit, so there is never an unexpected filling of space.
These are just alternatives to Google. Some are privacy-oriented, but others are just not Google. They may, in fact, be worse than Google.
That's not a bad list. Even if the alternatives are not "private", not putting all your eggs in one basket may be a good idea.
Noteworthy is the lack of Microsoft products in that list. Sure Microsoft isn't known for being the champion of privacy, but neither are Dropbox and Slack.
I've been looking for an alternative to Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/etc for a while and I've seen these couple of suggestions come up a few times. Each time I look at them, I find their websites to be incomprehensible to what their product actually _is_. The worst of them is Coda. Looking at their landing page, I have NO idea what Coda is or does. None of the other alternatives seem to do what I want easily. I want to type in a URL, edit a spreadsheet, and close my browser. I'm sure one of these alternatives does exactly that, but it isn't obvious from their home pages that that is the case.
Classic startup landing page design where they forget to explain what their product is to potential users/clients.
I never heard of Coda before so went to their landing page (https://coda.io) to see if it could really be as bad as you say it is.
The copy on the website is generally marketing heavy with things like "Coda is a new doc that grows with your ideas" but things like "Coda is a new canvas that blends tables and text together" makes sense to me, imagining that it's like a document that also have tables, that you can do computations on (so like Excel). The example videos/GIFs seems to show the functionality and when I reached the end, I feel like at least have a slight idea what it's about.
Wouldn't be enough to compare it with other services, but I definitely have "some idea" of what Coda is.
Am I alone in understanding this from looking at the website, without any prior experience?
I do know some other examples that could fit into the "Classic startup landing page design where they forget to explain what their product is to potential users/clients" ending of your comment, but I don't think Coda missed the mark on explaining what they do.
> I feel like at least have a slight idea what it's about.
But is a slight idea enough to make a purchase decision? I deduced that it's some sort of application that combines a table and text. But that could look and function 100 different ways. There's 4 or 5 animated gifs all doing something completely different, and none of those is typing text into something that looks like a spreadsheet. So I'm left wondering, does it have a spreadsheet capability? Without digging further or watching product tour videos, I have no idea.
I agree with you that it could be better, but so many other startups do a lot worse that looking down on someone that is not perfect, hurts the cause of "fixing shitty landing pages" rather than helps.
That first gif is a todo list, which is NOT a spreadsheet.
> I agree with you that it could be better, but so many other startups do a lot worse that looking down on someone that is not perfect, hurts the cause of "fixing shitty landing pages" rather than helps.
So you agree that it sucks, but it isn't the worst landing page, so it gets a pass? I'm not on some crusade to fix shitty landing pages. I'm actively looking for a replacement for an application I use in my day-to-day life. The onus is on Coda to explain to me clearly and in 3s if their application meets those needs. I'm simply pointing out that their landing page has failed to do that FOR ME.
I thought it looked neat and wanted to try it. Click the sign up button and it asks me to log in with Google. No other options. The easiest way to get me to ditch a product is to use Google or Facebook for authentication. Right off the bat, I’m thinking monetizing user data is the primary component of the business model. It’s guilt by association at this point. Besides, I don’t use Google or Facebook and I’m not about to start now.
For me the biggest problem is Youtube. The other solutions are not in the same level of quality/quantity.
DuckDuckGo feels way better as a product to me (using sometimes the bang to use google in privacy mode). And ProtonMail is good enough.
If it's any help, NewPipe [0] is a FOSS YouTube client for Android which doesn't require an account, doesn't require Google Play Services, and doesn't (!) display ads.
Yes, it has subscription support and you can import/export that list to keep it backed up.
It also has a TON of features, like PiP, background play (for video and audio), downloading, and much, much more.
Ivory [1] might be the closest iOS equivalent, and
Motionbox [2] and FreeTube [3] the closest desktop equivalents.
Due to YT constantly changing video decryption functionality, ~4-5 times a year it breaks for multiple days. I fully expect it to be suddenly broken in a year or two.
The downloading feature and background play is what makes it for me. Occasionally Youtube makes a change that breaks it but the devs have been pretty good about updates
I switched to duckduckgo for a few weeks, and I gave up and went back to google. The results were just so much worse. I had to wade through a sea of stackoverflow results to get to the one piece of official documentation on page 2.
As a replacement for Google images, Wikimedia Commons is pretty good[0]. I made a image search site backed by Wikimedia Commons data with a UI more like Google Images[1].
Second Leaflet. When Google Maps dropped support for loading GPX files from external websites (a handy way to share tracks ), I was forced to find my own solution. I found Leaflet and a few hours later I was up and running with topo maps and GPX tracks overlayed on my own webserver.
What's missing from the list is Android and Google Play, the number one spy device in my house.
As far as I know there is only iOS and Android forks.
Android forks are an option if your phone supports it, but living without Google Play (Services) limits your app choices a lot.
Windows Phone and Blackberry sadly gave up the battle. Others like Ubuntu phone and Firefox OS never really materialised.
As far as Google Play alternatives go, there is the Amazon store and F-droid, but good luck finding even the most basic Android apps on either.
Honestly, I'd settle for a dumbphone with WhatsApp(extremely widely used here) and a browser. Almost feels like we're coming full-circle to the first iPhone with very few native apps and powerful web app capabilities.
Looks like a mix of alternatives picked from some site and collated here without verification.
Some may not exist/work — checked some random links and found privateemail throwing an error on registration and bravos having some statement about working on something new, with the old one unavailable.
I’m also not sure if Discord, Slack, etc., really count as private alternatives (well, there are people who diss Telegram on privacy).
I just started hosting my own email and haven't had trouble emailing Gmail, though I have limited testing. I have SPF, dkim and dmarc all set up, would that help?
I've been hosting my own email for years. It's not without its challenges, but it's certainly not what I would call 'insurmountable'. This 'never host your own email!' meme needs to go.
For chat, consider setting up your own Murmur server [1] and use Mumble to do voice and text chat. It is not has happy-clicky as Discord, but the sound quality is great and you can have thousands of people on a tiny VM. It is very easy to deploy. It looks like people have created ansible playbooks for this too. [2]
[1] - https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page
[2] - https://github.com/systemli/ansible-role-mumble
P.S. use their 1.3 RC version. It is very stable and much better than 1.2.
Mumble is pretty crummy for text chat from my experience. I still use it for voice on a fairly frequent basis, but having very ephemeral text logs (on client restart), and a lack of pinging users makes it a huge pain to use for text.
I would happily still use IRC however.
Yeah, I prefer IRC too. I ended up shutting down all my IRC servers. Most folks moved to Discord/Slack and it just wasn't worth the effort to maintain them for my use case.
I only suggest murmur / mumble because they are super east to set up.
Have you tried Synapse/Matrix?
A coworker suggested matrix, but I have been fine with murmur/mumble for my use cases. If a lot of people needed text chat, I would crank up the ol' IRC daemons and put TheLounge in front of it.
I love how this always pops-up and how I always reply with these 2 links:
- https://prism-break.org/
- https://droid-break.info/
Privacytools is another one worth mentioning
https://www.privacytools.io/
https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io
Seconded, it’s a great resource. Just started with Joplin because of actually
I love how PRISM Break is still actively curated: https://gitlab.com/prism-break/prism-break/activity
OpenDNS is on prismbreaks avoid list! Why is that?
I use opendns enterprise at work and free at home.
Likely because they’re now owned by Cisco and their privacy policy is now just Cisco’s generic policy, so it’s not clear how much they log.
How are these alternatives "privacy-friendly"? I'm pretty sure Opera, Vimeo and many others are monetized and include advertising. Also, why does something like Google Authenticator need a "privacy-friendly" alternative when it doesn't even need Internet connectivity to work? Don't get me wrong, we should put down Google products, but are the ones listed here really any better for privacy and security?
Personally, I use andOTP because:
- it's available in F-Droid - it has a PIN
The first guarantees that I'll know if they try to sneak something in (they're good at labeling potentially undesirable features), and the second just makes so much sense that I don't know why Google Authenticator doesn't do it (it might now, but it didn't when I last used it).
Also, I just like how andOTP looks more than Google Authenticator, but that's entirely subjective.
That being said, the fact that andOTP _can_ exist really keeps other apps in line. So even if you don't use an alternative like andOTP, you still benefit from it existing.
Looking at AirTable's Privacy Policy, it does not appear that they have any interest in protecting privacy. They have a line in their "How We Share Your Data" section, that reads:
* With others for any legitimate business purpose, provided the information is aggregated and anonymized.
So...you're selling it.
Yet Google Authenticator requests full network access. An alternative like AndOTP doesn't.
Presumably for https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/2653433?visit_id=...
Please consider adding rsync.net as a privacy friendly[1] alternative to gdrive, etc.
We just added the 'rclone'[2] binary executable to our (very strictly limited) environment which basically allows you to send/recv to and from any cloud service.
So, not just a good alternative to google drive (et. al) but a very useful "cloud storage swiss army knife" in general.
[1] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt [2] https://rclone.org/
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I _love_ the idea of rsync.net but the pricing just cripples it. $40/TBmo up to 10TB, $30/TBmo up to 100TB or $20/TBmo beyond that. And you have to buy the storage up front and pay for it even if you don't use it.
To put this in perspective, I can get a Hetzner SX62 dedicated server for $72 USD/month. This comes with 4x10TB HDDs which I can put into RAID5, giving me 30TB usable storage. It also comes with an unlimited gigabit pipe, RAM and a CPU. In total, this costs $2.4/TBmo.
If I want duplication in multiple countries (which isn't included in rsync.net's base price?), I can buy a second one, increasing my costs to a horrendous $4.8/TBmo, still a quarter of the cheapest price I can get at rsync.net.
I get the "I don't want to manage the hardware" argument but 4x (arguably 8x) is way too high a cost for me.
I'm aware of the Attic/Borg plan and I really like the idea but it's only close to competitive at the highest 100TB+ pricing ($5/TBmo).
Your points are very well taken and appreciated.
Two things:
First, we are going to continue to slowly decrease the price per gigabyte, as we have these past 14 years - and as always, existing customers just get grants, or gifts, of extra space so that their price per GB always drops to match our current pricing for new customers.
Second, just to clarify: "And you have to buy the storage up front and pay for it even if you don't use it." - please note that:
We can increase the size of your filesystem at any time, with no downtime involved - so there is no need to overbuy in anticipation of future usage.
Further, you are granted a +10% grace at all times, so you always have some room to grow.
Finally, the system automatically emails you as you get close to your limit, so there is never an unexpected filling of space.
I have been using rsync.net for years (with attic, borg and now restic) and am very happy with the service.
Privacy-friendly?
These are just alternatives to Google. Some are privacy-oriented, but others are just not Google. They may, in fact, be worse than Google.
That's not a bad list. Even if the alternatives are not "private", not putting all your eggs in one basket may be a good idea.
Noteworthy is the lack of Microsoft products in that list. Sure Microsoft isn't known for being the champion of privacy, but neither are Dropbox and Slack.
I've been looking for an alternative to Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/etc for a while and I've seen these couple of suggestions come up a few times. Each time I look at them, I find their websites to be incomprehensible to what their product actually _is_. The worst of them is Coda. Looking at their landing page, I have NO idea what Coda is or does. None of the other alternatives seem to do what I want easily. I want to type in a URL, edit a spreadsheet, and close my browser. I'm sure one of these alternatives does exactly that, but it isn't obvious from their home pages that that is the case.
Classic startup landing page design where they forget to explain what their product is to potential users/clients.
I never heard of Coda before so went to their landing page (https://coda.io) to see if it could really be as bad as you say it is.
The copy on the website is generally marketing heavy with things like "Coda is a new doc that grows with your ideas" but things like "Coda is a new canvas that blends tables and text together" makes sense to me, imagining that it's like a document that also have tables, that you can do computations on (so like Excel). The example videos/GIFs seems to show the functionality and when I reached the end, I feel like at least have a slight idea what it's about.
Wouldn't be enough to compare it with other services, but I definitely have "some idea" of what Coda is.
Am I alone in understanding this from looking at the website, without any prior experience?
I do know some other examples that could fit into the "Classic startup landing page design where they forget to explain what their product is to potential users/clients" ending of your comment, but I don't think Coda missed the mark on explaining what they do.
> I feel like at least have a slight idea what it's about.
But is a slight idea enough to make a purchase decision? I deduced that it's some sort of application that combines a table and text. But that could look and function 100 different ways. There's 4 or 5 animated gifs all doing something completely different, and none of those is typing text into something that looks like a spreadsheet. So I'm left wondering, does it have a spreadsheet capability? Without digging further or watching product tour videos, I have no idea.
As I said: "Wouldn't be enough to compare it with other services"
I was mainly replying to the "I have NO idea what Coda is or does".
> does it have a spreadsheet capability?
The first GIF (https://cdn.coda.io/assets/21b38f7b35ac/img/welcome/doc/tabl...) shows a spreadsheet, as far as I understand that tiny demo.
I agree with you that it could be better, but so many other startups do a lot worse that looking down on someone that is not perfect, hurts the cause of "fixing shitty landing pages" rather than helps.
That first gif is a todo list, which is NOT a spreadsheet.
> I agree with you that it could be better, but so many other startups do a lot worse that looking down on someone that is not perfect, hurts the cause of "fixing shitty landing pages" rather than helps.
So you agree that it sucks, but it isn't the worst landing page, so it gets a pass? I'm not on some crusade to fix shitty landing pages. I'm actively looking for a replacement for an application I use in my day-to-day life. The onus is on Coda to explain to me clearly and in 3s if their application meets those needs. I'm simply pointing out that their landing page has failed to do that FOR ME.
Hello Coda PR
I thought it looked neat and wanted to try it. Click the sign up button and it asks me to log in with Google. No other options. The easiest way to get me to ditch a product is to use Google or Facebook for authentication. Right off the bat, I’m thinking monetizing user data is the primary component of the business model. It’s guilt by association at this point. Besides, I don’t use Google or Facebook and I’m not about to start now.
Wow, so there you go. Strike #2!
For me the biggest problem is Youtube. The other solutions are not in the same level of quality/quantity. DuckDuckGo feels way better as a product to me (using sometimes the bang to use google in privacy mode). And ProtonMail is good enough.
If it's any help, NewPipe [0] is a FOSS YouTube client for Android which doesn't require an account, doesn't require Google Play Services, and doesn't (!) display ads.
Yes, it has subscription support and you can import/export that list to keep it backed up.
It also has a TON of features, like PiP, background play (for video and audio), downloading, and much, much more.
Ivory [1] might be the closest iOS equivalent, and Motionbox [2] and FreeTube [3] the closest desktop equivalents.
[0]. https://newpipe.schabi.org/
[1]. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ivory-video-player/id129434748...
[2]. http://omega.gg/MotionBox/
[3]. https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
I love NewPipe, it works fantastically.
I am nervous that Google will find a way to kill it if it gets big enough. It's not exactly an alternative to YouTube, it's more of a band-aid.
Due to YT constantly changing video decryption functionality, ~4-5 times a year it breaks for multiple days. I fully expect it to be suddenly broken in a year or two.
The downloading feature and background play is what makes it for me. Occasionally Youtube makes a change that breaks it but the devs have been pretty good about updates
I switched to duckduckgo for a few weeks, and I gave up and went back to google. The results were just so much worse. I had to wade through a sea of stackoverflow results to get to the one piece of official documentation on page 2.
I'm not certainly sure if this helps but there's youtube front-end interface: https://www.invidio.us/
For chat, what about https://keybase.io ?
As a replacement for Google images, Wikimedia Commons is pretty good[0]. I made a image search site backed by Wikimedia Commons data with a UI more like Google Images[1].
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [1] https://canweimage.com
For anyone looking for more info on the Brave browser i did a quick writeup about it: https://www.tkjef.com/blog/what-is-brave-browser/
Was a diehard Vivaldi user, but Brave's performance has won me over.
Second Leaflet. When Google Maps dropped support for loading GPX files from external websites (a handy way to share tracks ), I was forced to find my own solution. I found Leaflet and a few hours later I was up and running with topo maps and GPX tracks overlayed on my own webserver.
What's missing from the list is Android and Google Play, the number one spy device in my house.
As far as I know there is only iOS and Android forks. Android forks are an option if your phone supports it, but living without Google Play (Services) limits your app choices a lot.
Windows Phone and Blackberry sadly gave up the battle. Others like Ubuntu phone and Firefox OS never really materialised.
As far as Google Play alternatives go, there is the Amazon store and F-droid, but good luck finding even the most basic Android apps on either.
Honestly, I'd settle for a dumbphone with WhatsApp(extremely widely used here) and a browser. Almost feels like we're coming full-circle to the first iPhone with very few native apps and powerful web app capabilities.
Cross your fingers for the librem phone
Looks like a mix of alternatives picked from some site and collated here without verification.
Some may not exist/work — checked some random links and found privateemail throwing an error on registration and bravos having some statement about working on something new, with the old one unavailable.
I’m also not sure if Discord, Slack, etc., really count as private alternatives (well, there are people who diss Telegram on privacy).
Same with Notion. If you read their privacy policy, data is not stored encrypted at rest, so I wouldn't view them as privacy-friendly.
https://alternativeto.net/ not all results will be privacy focused.
some other alternatives
Browser waterfox and other forks
search yacy
email self hosted various vps serves
sheets/docs own/next cloud. libre/open office
video hooktube invidius
adwords a-ads
dns opennic
drive sia ipfs storj...
hangouts keybase bitmessage tox
images pixeldrain(sia)
Don’t host your own email. Unless you don’t want anyone to be able receive your emails.
I just started hosting my own email and haven't had trouble emailing Gmail, though I have limited testing. I have SPF, dkim and dmarc all set up, would that help?
I've been hosting my own email for years. It's not without its challenges, but it's certainly not what I would call 'insurmountable'. This 'never host your own email!' meme needs to go.
If you own a telephone you are stuffed, google will get you. Your friends have you in their contacts - that's it. You are done for.
no Excel as an alternative to google sheets? aww.