A bit of a promotional topic as I think the Etherpad-Lite integration into Nextcloud is really overlooked compared to other options such as Collabora or OnlyOffice.
Here is what my current Etherpad in Nextcloud looks like:
You need the Ownpad App: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/ownpad
And a small server capable of running Node.Js with Etherpad-Lite: http://etherpad.org/
Optionally Spreadsheets are supported via Ethercalc, see further below.
Here is also a nice video of some advanced features and scalability of Etherpad: https://youtu.be/uVFQ5KgtMrM
PROs:
- Very lightweight and no restrictions… run hundreds of documents and users on a small VPS
- Easy to run on the same server as Nextcloud (I run it behind a Nginx reverse-proxy for easy https)
- Very customizable with lots of plugins (but that also means it takes a while to setup to your liking)
- Easy to share/collaborate with users that are not registered on your Nextcloud
- Integrated chat (there are also plugins for video chat via WebRTC and IRC chat)
- Nice mobile client ( https://github.com/mikifus/padland ), but web interface is also fully responsive
- Full Markdown and code highlight support via plugins
- Full time-line of edits that is even included in the exported etherpad file.
- Many other integrations such as Dokuwiki, Wordpress, Moodle etc.
CONs:
- Limited NC-user integration in Ownpad
- Limited access control (by default pads are only hidden behind a random string, but this is only a limitation of Ownpad not Etherpad itself). There is an experimental Etherpad API system though.
- No true integration of content in Nextcloud (the pads are only linked in the NC files app, content is stored in Etherpad. Via the Etherpad-API this could be much improved though.)
- No native .docx or .odt editing, but reasonably good importers and exporters are available
- Both Etherpad and Ownpad have improved only slowly as of recent years
So as you can see, most of the CONs are related to the very basic NC integration via the Ownpad plugin… so this is sort of a call for finding more contributors to this NC app so that Etherpad can become an even greater option for Nextcloud users in the future.
If you have questions how to set it up, please don’t hesitate to ask here