In a way yes, we are running from company to company. For myself I accepted a few compromises along the way because I don’t have the time and energy to do everything myself. So this is where I am at.

Hosting email yourself is a nightmare and is getting basically impossible more and more (see here). So I accepted my fate and looked for a solution that fits my needs.

For cloud storage I used to self host Nextcloud and / or Syncthing for years. While it was fun in the beginning I loathed it at the end. Even with good hardware and Docker and 25 years of experience there was always something that stopped to work after a while - especially with Nextcloud. For Syncthing (which I really like) there is no real client for iOS (wife’s phone). Also exposing anything to the internet can turn into a nightmare pretty quickly. But my work blocks my VPN… You see what I mean? There certainly are solutions for all that but I was tired of looking.

Hetzner is a large German hoster with a quite good reputation. They need to follow GDPR regulations and because they provide closely monitored solutions for my work I know they do as much as possible. The Nextcloud instance is super reliable ever since I started.

I use Nextcloud tools for encryption at rest which is enough for me. They even let you perform cli commands (a few from a web UI, other through support mail). Support is fast and well informed.

It is certainly not for everyone! But for my scenario it is the currently best compromise.