8 Self-Hosted Cloud Storage Solutions

There are many reasons to choose your own Cloud storage solutions especially if you have sensitive data. What if the service you use shuts down, or your data is lost?

Why setup your own private cloud based storage when there are already options available like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, etc? The logic is the same as you would apply to any public vs private service. You have more control over something you setup yourself, including rights management, the security of data, etc. Here are eight private cloud storage solutions to try out.

Creating a cloud on your own server gives you better control on your data. Following are other reasons to have your personal cloud storage solution:
• Better privacy protection and encryption: Avoid spying on your files on the server using encryption.
• Good performance as your data is stored in local storage instead of a remote data center.
• Saving on your WAN bandwidth or the service provider for a network.
• Unlimited storage space or client connections.
• Sharing your files and data with or without password or time limit be it publicly, or privately.

ownCloud
It is a popular personal cloud solution and often referred as Dropbox replacement. It synchronizes your files to the
private server. You can access your files globally from the ownCloud server via mobile and desktop apps.

You can add external storage to your ownCloud with Dropbox, SWIFT, FTPs, Google Docs, S3, external WebDAV servers and more. Enable the encryption app to encrypt data on external storage for improved security and privacy. They have tons of plugins available, like music players, photo galleries, and video players.

SparkleShare
It uses Git as a storage backend and is particularly good at hosting documents. SparkleShare creates a special folder on your computer. When someone adds, removes or edits a file, it will sync both host and all your peers.

It keeps a revision of the modified files history, as well as support for encryption. It provides the Web interface with file management and link sharing and Dropbox-style synchronization.

Syncthing
It is an open-source file synchronization client/server application, written in Go. It replaces proprietary sync
and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized.

Every node is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate. Only nodes that you have explicitly allowed can connect to your cluster. Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration, it just works over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Just give your ID to you friends, share a folder and watch.

git-annex assistant
The git-annex assistant creates a synchronized folder on each of your OSX and Linux computers, Android devices,removable drives, NAS appliances, and cloud services.

You can manage, share, and sync your large files with the power of git and the ease of use of a simple folder you drop files into.

Syncany
It allows you to securely backup and share certain folders of your computers using any kind of storage. Syncany is an open source and provides data encryption and incredible flexibility in terms of storage type and provider.

Backup your photo collection and share files with friends. Files are encrypted before uploading. Use any kind of storage - FTP, S3, WebDAV, NFS, Samba/Windows file share and many more. It provides automatic/continuous file synchronization.

Pydio (formerly AjaXplorer)
It is a stable software solution for file sharing and synchronization. Pydio and oqnCloud both have advanced
web interfaces with wide range of plugins and intuitive user interfaces (web / mobile / desktop).

Pydio provides a web interface with file management and link sharing. It has enterprise grade legacy filesystems drivers and comprehensive admin interface.

Stacksync cloud storage
It is an open-source scalable Personal Cloud that can adapt to an organization’s requirements and implements
the basic components to create a synchronization tool. StackSync is a Dropbox-like open source synchronization
tool that runs on top of OpenStack Swift.

The storage back-end uses OpenStack Swift - open source cloud storage software where you can store and retrieve lots of data in virtual containers. It’s based on the Cloud Files offering from Rackspace. But it is also possible to use other storage back-ends, such as an FTP server or S3.

Seafile
It is very much like Pydio, but with lesser support in some file protocols as it doesn’t support samba. It also
comes with a desktop client for all major OS. It provides both paid cloud version on their server and open source
version which can be deployed in your own server.

You can synchronize files and data with PC and mobile devices easily or use the server’s web interface for managing your data files. There are no limits on data storage space or the number of connected clients to your private cloud.

Comparison Chart

Raj Kumar Maurya | Pcquest