I am trying to ditch Evernote for Joplin as part of a general effort to desert the US based online service providers. This is for home use and I am not a digital native. Even the jargon on this forum is offputting.
So: At the moment I am using Dropbox for sync. I looked at Nextcloud as an alternative. Nightmare! The suggestion was to use Cloudamo as a provider. Then what is the function of Nextcloud? Just a front end? Do I have to sign up for two new services just to sync Joplin?
In any event, I tried. The signup link through Nextcloud didnât work - it repeatedly told me that the username was taken but the password was incorrect. But I donât recall being asked for a password! So I signed up for Cloudamo on their website to see if that got around it. They accepted the password and recognised Nextcloud. 10 mins later I got warnings from Google that someone (in the USA, I am in London) was trying to access my Google account. Huh?
This all seems daft. The Nextdoor signup page directs me to Cloudamo but doesnât take me any further. Joplin suggests Nextcloud as a sync target but doesnât recognise Nextcloud address which in any case doesnât seem to be where the files will be stored.
Is there anywhere a SIMPLE guide to how all this should be setup and then used?
Usually, people run Nextcloud on their own server. For example, buy a used desktop for $50 on craigslist, install Ubuntu linux as the operating system on it, then install Nextcloud on that. Then make that computer accessible on your home network or over the Internet. The users type in the address of that computer and log in to the Nextcloud service it is running.
You can also use the paid service thatâs run by the company that develops and maintains Nextcloud. If youâre a paying customer, I would think theyâd answer your questions pretty quickly and help you get set up with whatever you want to do.
So, do you want to run your own Nextcloud server on your own computer, which is free software, or pay the Nextcloud company to just run a server for you?
Oh I just looked into the paid service and I canât tell whoâs actually running it. I thought the Nextcloud developers were running it, but it looks like there are several different businesses to choose from which run Nextcloud servers for you.
For me, it looks like Cloudamo is suggested first for people, but you can also click on the âchange providerâ link to see others. I looked up Cloudamo and their lowest priced option at $4 per month looks to me like it could be a good start. Iâd want to know what apps run on it and how well they run.
I myself havenât used a paid service. I just run my own on a spare computer. For notes, I havenât needed something as complex as Joplin. Iâve been fine with Nextcloudâs built-in text editor. Thereâs a nice note app you can enable in Nextcloud called âCarnetâ which you can also add images to.
Thank you for a quick & comprehensive reply. I aimed to use one orne external services but when I try to do that through nextcloud to cloudamo I get a âmalformed connectionâ error. Maybe I should give up on this! Dropbox simply works!
Donât give up so easily. You are right, here on the forum, you will mostly find IT experts who are able to run their own servers. This is also sometimes frightening for me. I think, also avarage users should be able to use privacy friendly alternatives to Dropbox, not only system administrators! There are lots of them actually, and for those the easiest solution is to use a managed solution. Cloudamo (that I havenât heard before) is just one of many. Generally I am always sceptical towards official recommendations and treat them as ads. One provider that most people seem to recommend is Hetzner, they offer packages starting from 3.36 Euro and you just need to sign up there and you will get a working Nextcloud installation https://www.hetzner.de/storage/storage-share
See also Affordable Nextcloud Provider | Hetzner.com
Nextcloud the software is opensource and can be installed on your server, a Raspberry, AWS, whateverâŚ
Nextcloud the society does NOT offer free or paid accounts. They offer technical support for the firms that install the software on their servers. In addition they usually target their commercial offers on big enough societies.
Yet there are several firms that offer hosted accounts. Nextcloud website offer some help to find these hosted accounts; the recommendations depend from your geographical location and your selections. You can have info about the price and the characteristics of the offer (which apps are installed, can you install extra apps, how many users you can have, ⌠and so on)
So Cloudamo is one of the providers of hosted accounts.
Thank you all & apologies for my ignorance. I was misled by Joplin promoting itself as a free alternative to evernote when in reality it is only offering half of evernoteâs functionality, i.e, notetaking without the cloudâŚ
as far as I know, @MickBeaman, you wonât get very happy with joplin AND nextcloud. joplin is a 3rd party-app for nextcloud and compatible until nc version 17. the most recent NC version is nc 20, right now. so joplin is considered not compatible right now (i know there are threads on the forum dealing with joplin so I dunno why the community found out recently on how to use joplin)
i, myself, have never used joplin so I dunno what joplin offers to their users.
apparently you have signed up to a so called free-hoster. usually they let you take a peek in what NC is capable of⌠but all in all they would only grant you access to the most basic apps (some of them even donât do that). i dunno of a free hoster offering joplin-app, right now (see above: most prolly itâs not even really compatible with the newest version of NC).
so you should get away from the idea of using joplin with NC.
but maybe there are other services that would make up for joplin? I personally like carnet to take notes, e.g.
but well if you donât have any problems giving your data to dropbox or google or amazon or microsoft, apple or whoelse⌠itâs ok.
with NC you could store your data safely at your own home. if you want that.
Itâs just not as easy/handy as you might know that from a windows service. at least not at first sight.
in other words: of course you can make it easy for yourself⌠like set up a homeserver (as someone suggested above), run it and install a free virtual machine (of NC, of course) to it,. or a docker or a snap.
For a better comprehension of the scenario, I provide more infos
I never used Joplin, yet I am a satisfied user of the Notes app, which is relatively basic yet it has also an android app. It is an app included in most Nextcloud installations and well integrated in the system.
If you pick a sort of basic Nextcloud installation you usually also have a good text and markdown editor (available in the web interface) and also a kanban app
Again, thanks for the advice received from everyone. @jimmykater, Joplinâs pitch is as an Evernote substitute with web clippers & the lot. Truth be told, Evernote is good and I have used it for over 15 years, But now they want paying and I am toooo mean. I worry about Dropbox privacy but at least they are still free. And @spartachetto, I took a look at the note apps you suggested but as far as I can see they donât go the whole hog with full multi-platform capability, cloud storage & clipping and whatnot.
I have the impression that something is still missing.
Notes is an app of Nextcloud. Notes files are stored on a Nextcloud instance.
It seems to me that this is cloud storage, but between us two someone is possibly missing some details.
About clipping I think you are right.
About multi-platform it depends a lot on your needs, because between native apps and web interface you can have a lot of solutions (even if maybe not enough for all)âŚ
I took a look at the note apps you suggested but as far as I can see they donât go the whole hog with full multi-platform capability, cloud storage & clipping and whatnot.
One way Nextcloud has multi-platform capability comes from the web-browser interface. You can use the whole Nextcloud system from just a web browser, without storing anything on your own computer. For example, the built-in text editor loads in the browser. You donât need to install anything on your computer, but nothing gets stored on your computer, itâs all stored on the server. You can download any files while logged in and save them to your computer as a backup if you want. You access the Nextcloud server by entering the address in the web browser and logging in, then logging out when youâre done. But any files you downloaded are not syncâd with the server, theyâre really just backups.
But when you want your computer to use files locally as if theyâre only stored on that computer, and you use your own program to edit and manage files, but you want these files to be stored on Nextcloud, that requires the Nextcloud client app to be installed on that computer. With the Nextcloud client app you have some options such as a remote directory (folder), which only stores data on the server, or a syncâd directory which stores the data both on the server and on your machine, and makes sure that changes on one turn into changes on the other. And you can manage the syncâd directory through the web interface if you ever feel like it, even through another computer, so that for example you can log into Nextcloud with your phoneâs web browser, edit a directory and files in it, then it will be altered on the server as well as the computer you have syncâd to that directory.
The Nextcloud client app has to made for each operating system that it will run on. So multi-platform capability with the client app comes from the developers making that app for each individual platform and making that available for download on the nextcloud.com website.
So to summarize: multi-platform capability is easy with the web interface, at the cost of everything being stored on the server, but you can download any individual file as a backup. The multi-platform capability is also possible with the Nextcloud client app, which synchronizes files between your computer and a Nextcloud server, but the app has to be designed for any operating system itâs to be run on.
Seriously, only use Dropbox if you donât value your security or your data. You can even delete something, only to have it appear years later, potentially leaking across the 'net.
Hereâs some articles about how bad Dropbox security is from 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2019.
Dropbox has leaked the details and contents of almost 100 million accounts in total. Are you gonna be in the next batch leaked?