Nextcloud didn’t expect competition like this

If you’ve ever scrolled through a self-hosting community online, you’re bound to hear the same complaints about Nextcloud over and over. It’s bloated, resource-hungry, and always tries to do too much at once. I’d rather turn my router into a backup hub instead of fussing over Nextcloud’s resource consumption.

So if you’re looking for a simple file server and not an entire productivity suite, I’ve got good news. There’s a new alternative in the self-hosting market, and Nextcloud did not see the competition coming.

When less really is more

Why Copyparty’s minimalism just works

Meet Copyparty. A lightweight file server that’s quietly making waves in the self-hosting world, and for good reason. The thing about Copyparty that immediately stands out is how simple it is. The entire file server and all its features are compressed into one Python file. Drop the file into the root directory of the drive you want to use, and run it to start the server. That’s it.

You can run it almost anywhere, including Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and even Raspberry Pi. You can choose to run it with or without Docker, and the whole setup is incredibly portable. Yes, you can build your own Raspberry Pi cloud server with Nextcloud, but it won’t get nearly the performance you would with Copyparty.

The simplicity also extends to what Copyparty actually does. It’s a web-based file server where you can upload, download, share, and store files for as long as you need. No extra email clients, calendar apps, or fancy collaborative editing features. Just a simple file server that lets you manage your files with ease.

Copyparty is fast, secure, and surprisingly capable

A lightweight server that punches way above its weight

Apart from being incredibly easy to get started, Copyparty is fast. Not just reasonably fast for a free, self-hosted tool, but legitimately faster than many alternatives, including Nexcloud.

While most file servers upload files as is, Copyparty splits larger files into chunks and sends them to the file server in parallel using separate TCP connections. This means if you’re uploading over a long distance or a slower connection, you generally get speeds regardless. Here, the bottleneck is your internet connection, not the server.

Another advantage of this approach is that interrupted downloads can be resumed. If your internet drops out in the middle of transferring a big file, Copyparty can pick up where the upload was left off when you get the internet working again.

The tool also packs in quite a few features that make file management a breeze. You get file deduplication, which saves disk space by using file hashes to avoid storing duplicate copies. On-the-fly compression means you have files automatically zipped without manually creating archives. Batch renaming and tagging let you organize larger collections of files or media while saving a ton of manual work and time.

Copyparty also supports quite a few file transfer protocols. HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, FTP, FTPS, TFTP, it speaks them all. This gives the tool remarkable flexibility. You can mount it as a network drive on Windows, access it through your FTP client of choice, or just use the web interface as you would with any other cloud storage alternative. There’s even built-in media and thumbnail support with a music player that reads metadata and an image gallery for browsing photos.

If the GUI interface seems limiting, you can use the terminal to sync folders to the server, kind of like rsync, but it uses HTTPS with deduplication. You can even use regular Curl or echo commands to download or upload files straight from the terminal.

Then comes security, a major concern with more lightweight file-management tools. Copyparty handles this through a single configuration file where you control everything. You can set up multiple user accounts, fine-tune file permissions using a flag system, and even control access to individual folders. The permission system is a bit old-school, similar to Linux’s chmod rather than modern cloud storage solutions, but it’s incredibly fast, effective, and easy to understand.

Additionally, you can also create temporary share links with passwords and expiry dates, check on active connections, active uploads, and more. There’s a fully fledged control center with advanced search options and filters to find whatever it is you’re looking for.

Nextcloud should be worried

This tiny project does what Nextcloud can’t

Nextcloud is a significantly more powerful and capable tool than Copyparty, and some of its underrated features will make you question paying for Google Workspace. But it’s also overkill for most people. Unless you want to self-host and configure an entire productivity suite, Nextcloud gives you features you’ll never use, complexity you didn’t ask for, and resource consumption that’ll have you reconsidering Google Drive or Dropbox.

Copyparty does one thing, and it does that well. It’s not trying to be your entire digital life. It’s a simple, fast file server that you can spin up on any device with storage and get your own cloud in minutes. It’s light on your system and doesn’t force you to run background database services or drown you in configuration options.

Copyparty might be the only file server you’ll ever need

Set it up once, forget about it forever

Copyparty isn’t for everyone, and it doesn’t pretend to be. If you need a fully integrated ecosystem with calendars, contacts, and collaborative documents, Nextcloud still makes sense. But if you just want a dead-simple, blazing-fast way to share and manage files over the internet on your own hardware, Copyparty might actually be the better choice.

Sometimes, the best tool is the one that does one thing exceptionally well, instead of doing everything adequately. In the file-sharing space, that tool is Copyparty, and it’s well worth a shot.