User-friendly Big Tech Alternatives

Update: I’ve updated the post with some notes and additional suggestions from folks on Mastodon! Thanks, everyone!

I made a post on Mastodon asking for input on non-self-hosted, user friendly solutions for alternatives to big tech products. The answers were mostly very technical and mostly self-hosted. I’m talking about services your parents or grandparents could use. Primarily cloud services that are easily accessible on both desktop via a web browser or app, and via a mobile app.

It seemed like a good subject for a blog post, so here we are. These are some options that are, in my opinion, good big tech alternatives for the average, non-technical person.

• Docs/Sheets/Slides:
  • Cryptpad
  • Zoho Docs
  • Murena
• Email:
  • Fastmail
  • Proton Mail
  • Tuta
• Browser:
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Vivaldi(Note: Vivaldi is based on the open-source Chromium browser which was created by and Google)
• Calendar:
  • Fastmail
  • TickTick
  • Zoho Calendar
  • Proton Calendar
• Cloud Storage
  • Koofr
  • Proton Drive
  • Dropbox(Note: Dropbox recently had a security breach)
  • Box
  • Sync
• Search
  • DuckDuckGo(Note: DDG gets its results from Bing)
  • Ecosia(Note: Ecosia gets its results from Bing)
  • StartPage(Note: StartPage gets its results from Google and Bing)
  • Kagi(Note: Though Kagi does have its own search index, it supplements this with results from Google, Bing, and Mojeek. Kagi is a paid, private search engine and requires an account.)
  • Mojeek(Note: Mojeek has its own search index, but gives users the option to search Google, Bing, and others from the Mojeek website.)
• Photos
  • Ente
  • Flickr
• Streaming Music
  • Deezer
  • Tidal

I’m sure there are categories and services I’m forgetting, so if you have any suggestions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Mastodon!