When I was looking to replace my google tools, I couldn’t find an easy to to alternative Google Photos. Things that were suggested like immich or Synology or ente required some level of technical know how or dedicated hardware. I ended up buying a Synology drive but I have issues with loading images/videos (it’s extremely slow).
Today I stumbled upon https://stingle.org/
I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like it might be a good option for anyone wanting to degooglify, but without all the extra fuffing around.
It also has a F-Droid distro!
Pricing starts at 1gb for free or 100gb for three bucks
If anyone get’s a chance, let me know if it’s really that good.
Selfhost and use https://syncthing.net/
Immich is the only viable alternative, IMO.
Problem is, self hosted solutions require an investment into dedicated software. And even still, it doesn’t work that well. As I said, my Synology Photos will load photos after a while, but videos is a whole different story. And it’s not the internet connection in my case
Typically the point of de-googling is to get independent. If you just go to another SaaS solution, you trade one dependency for another dependency. They can lock you out from one day to the next, increase their prices, change their terms of service, etc.
Also if one of the reasons to turn your back to Google is that they should no longer have access to your data, then look up what the SaaS provider you are turning to is hosting with. Chances are high they are using Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. So your data still ends up on machines of the big three.
Is it FOSS? What’s the MIT license?
Ente is another option that I have been using for almost 2 years now. It’s end-to-end encrypted and open source with an app on F-Droid. There have been a lot of updates over the last year that have significantly improved the experience using the app.
