Personal cloud storage recommendations with group sharing?

spacedskunk · 3 Nov 2018 at 16:22

Hi all,

I'm wondering if someone has a good recommendation for this particular scenario. I originally thought a NAS with remote access might be a good idea, but this won't be suitable because we can't guarantee it will be fully safe from harm.

My family have over the years got a lot of photos and videos which we want to easily share, and importantly backup. My sister and brother-in-law are freelance digital creative professionals so would like it for business use too where their work files are completely separated.

In a nutshell:

Unlimited storage
Can be used for personal and business use
Offers easy file/folder sharing - preferably can share a file without an account
Has an app that backs up automatically
If possible run on Ubuntu but this isn't a major problem

I've done lots of research and nothing seems to tick all the boxes, and we don't want to compromise as moving providers would be such a hassle!

Any help would be appreciated! Pricing might be an issue, but if it ticks all of the above it would be invaluable.

andy_mk3 · 3 Nov 2018 at 16:24

Google drive? Unlimited if you have 5 (or 10,cant remember)paid users.

spacedskunk · 3 Nov 2018 at 16:32

andy_mk3 said:
Google drive? Unlimited if you have 5 (or 10,cant remember)paid users.

Thank you for that. I've just done a quick look and yes it's unlimited if it's 5 paid users or more so it'll be a minimum of £33 per month, but considering the prices I've seen that's not too bad. The only thing I'd need to work out with this is if GSuite would be suitable for personal users, as it looks to be focused on business/enterprise (when you sign up you need to put in your business name).

Feek · 3 Nov 2018 at 16:41

Is it worth renting a server and setting up your own NextCloud or OwnCloud or whatever it's called?

Pho · 3 Nov 2018 at 17:00

Do you have Office 365? You get the latest version of office + 1TB of OneDrive space for 6 people (1TB each, so 6TB total) for a ~£7.99/month subscription. It's pretty hard to beat that, even without access to office.

Feek said:
Is it worth renting a server and setting up your own NextCloud or OwnCloud or whatever it's called?

I had a fair amount of hassle with setting those up. Something always seemed to go a bit weird. SeaFile was the best one I used from what I remember though as it had the best client.

As much as I like hacking away and settings things up myself, I think I'd look at OneDrive/Google/DropBox/Backblaze to be certain my stuff won't get lost. But remember you should still backup to an external disk or something as well just incase.

The Geezer · 3 Nov 2018 at 17:06

Have you looked at the Synology NAS solutions, it ticks all your boxes.

Easy to setup and maintain IMHO

andy_mk3 · 3 Nov 2018 at 19:37

spacedskunk said:
Thank you for that. I've just done a quick look and yes it's unlimited it it's 5 paid users or more so it'll be a minimum of £33 per month, but considering the prices I've seen that's not too bad. The only thing I'd need to work out with this is if GSuite would be suitable for personal users, as it looks to be focused on business/enterprise (when you sign up you need to put in your business name).

It is focussed on business use but quite simple for the end user also (think typical office staff have to use this lol).. I use it for my personal backups it's a solid platform to work with.