I am looking an alternative to Onedrive for Business and Drop Box which both have the file sharing features that I need for what I do but have silly quirks that I cannot stand. I also am looking for a cloud based note taking system that lets me share with others outside users as well. I currently use Google Keep but that also has silly features that I find annoying, like typing suggestions on the Android App that are completely unrelated to my notes or my search history.
Hi @Matt124907
Well, there’s not much to say from your post, except that Nextcloud can basically do everything you listed as requirements.
However, like any other software, Nextcloud has of course its “quirks” as well, and since you don’t provide any details about what exactly you don’t like about Dropbox or OneDrive, it’s hard to say anything about that.
Also, what people perceive as “quirks” is usually quite subjective, so it’s probably best to try it out for yourself for a few weeks.
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There are a lot of Managed Nextcloud providers around the world. These offer different numbers of functions and different amounts of memory. But they are very easy to get started with. And in the end, all Nextclouds behave the same whether hosted internally or externally. What country are you from? Maybe there is a free provider from your country.
Here is the only thing I dont like about onedrive. After an update some time ago these status columns started to appear and there is no way to get rid of them for good.
One thing I do like about onedrive is the context option for sharing files which open for the recipient in a web browser without having to sign in to some kind of account.
However I dont like how my email address is visible from the share link and how my full name appears in a column. Sometimes I want to share links with people over the internet who don’t know what my email address is and I have to copy the files over to gdrive which is more inconspicuous.
I have tried Drop box but briefly but after only a few hours of use it started sending me random tips in the form of notifications from the taskbar which I found to be distracting enough to not want to fully migrate everything over.
It appears Nextcloud has note taking, cloud storage, and file sharing all as supported features. So before I waste any more money and time I just wanted to make sure that this software is compatible with my personal tastes.
Test e.g. with https://tab.digital . You need username, email and password and you get a Nextcloud URL. You can delete the account in settings.
Nextcloud is too confusing for me. And thats saying something since I work in the IT industry. I understand that Nextcloud doesn’t host their own service, it is just the software. But I made an account last night and when I try to resume the setup process it just says the email is already taken and there is NO way to login with that email. In fact, the only emails I have received relating to Nextcloud were from this forum.
Then when I go to the home page there is an option to “try Nextcloud now” which opens the trial page. It asks for a “business email” (I do actually have one but I don’t give it out to anyone other than a few people) but it won’t let me proceed because it is a Gmail address. What difference does it make whether the email address is from Gmail or a private domain? I really wanted to try this software out but it seems there is no way for me to do so without making a fake email address just to try starting over from scratch. This has got to be the most complicated onboarding process ever!
Yes. Nextcloud is really confusing. There is the community project and there is the Nextcloud GmbH to sell Nextcloud Enterprise license and that is ok. You can e.g. create an account at https://tab.digital . But this has no relation to the form from Nextcloud GmbH, where you can get a contact to Nextcloud GmbH and a test account, which is then hosted on https://demo1.nextcloud.com or https://demo2.nextcloud.com. The test account from Nextcloud GmbH is a 60 minute test account and I meant an account at Tab.Digital where you can test it under real conditions with a normal account. If you have password problems with Tab.Digital, only Tab.Digital and not Nextcloud GmbH can help you.
Perhaps as a little help. Each Nextcloud has its own domain, subdomain or subdirectory. The respective operator of the site is responsible.
https://evi.nl.tab.digital (Tab.Digital)
https://magentacloud.de (Deutsche Telekom)
https://drive.shadow.tech (shadow)
https://demo1.nextcloud.com (Nextcloud GmbH)
https://cloud.nextcloud.com (Nextcloud GmbH)
…
It’s a bit like a Wordpress installation but with file sharing and some other functions. 
Unfortunately, the Nextcloud instances available free of charge are quite confusing. Which country are you from?
Incidentally, it used to be possible to create test accounts for https://demo1.nextcloud.com and https://demo2.nextcloud.com without user registration. Here too, Nextcloud GmbH has unfortunately made it far too difficult for users like you. As written, it is only about test accounts, which only exist for 60 minutes anyway. The registration is probably only there to obtain company data.