Alternatives to iCloud for cloud storage?

Software
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With Apple’s again and again “comply in advance” of politicians and their agendas that I find offensive, I want to cancel my $10/month iCloud subscription. But I have five other family members sharing the 2TB of backup so I want to find a viable alternative before I cancel. I’ve reviewed posts from about five years ago without success. Anyone have a good alternative for iPhone cloud support?

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My response will assume your usage includes iOS and/or iPadOS (you did say iPhone, but just in case). If your only Apple product/cloud use is macOS, there’s a way to do this that isn’t so bad. But if it’s mobile devices we’re talking about…

This feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There is no option that I’m aware of that will come with anywhere near the convenience or features for iOS and iPadOS cloud storage. Making your life and your shared family member’s lives more difficult and more risky for data loss (especially photos and phone backups) is a very high price to pay to deprive Apple of $9-10/mo.

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Cloud support being…? What exactly are you looking for? Photos backup only? Then I’d give Google Photos a look. Full storage of all files and the such? Maybe take a look at Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. With Files coming a long way, most of those should work alright.

None will be as seamless, however. But if you must leave Apple’s paid cloud storage for another, those are good places to start.

For what it is worth, you are likely to find problems with any big company if what Apple is doing is bothering you. So maybe there are smaller solutions out there I’m not aware of.

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Thanks to both HobbyCollector and J_B for their responses. I agree that it is likely a painful change to make, and that alternatives are also likely to have their ethical challenges (to my way of seeing it).

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This is good advice. Other than Apples native iCloud solution, I would probably go for Google or MS, but then again…

Going for another party poses significant hassles in terms of family sharing and potential risks if the provider goes down. And self hosting is, well, even more of a hassle.

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I cannot vouch for it personally not having used it, but I have an acquaintance who is happy with a self-hosted NextCloud setup as an alternative to iCloud services. If ethical considerations are primary for you self-hosting is likely to be where you end up. And if so I salute you for it, I have not the bravery to go all the way down that road :smile:

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I am really liking Proton. Their stance on security and privacy is very clear and like that they continuously developing new applications. Like others have mentioned, storage is not as seemless as iCloud so #ymmv.

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I began this process back in February. I’ve completely reconfigured my use of my Apple devices and with each week I’m glad I did. That said, I would not really on Google or Microsoft for the same reasons.

  • I moved my email to RunBox though there are several others worth considering. Mailbox, MailFence, Tuta being the three that come to mind.
  • Messaging, voice and video calls via Signal. That’s been very reliable and a pleasure to use.
  • File storage. This I do as a kind of local cloud that relies on Sync thing on the Mac and Linux and Mobius Sync on iPad/iPhone. This has worked flawlessly keeping all devices synced for months. It takes a bit of time to set-up but it’s not difficult. All my devices sync a shared folder. Anything I want on all of them goes there. When I leave home I know that the iPad or laptop has all the most recent files in that folder. When I return any updated files sync the moment I’m back on the network.

I’ll never go back to use of a remote cloud. I just don’t need it and I prefer knowing that all my files are safe and secure locally.

That said, this solution does not cover photos sync. There may be a cloud service that would work for you or you could devise some sort of local sync.