A lot of my daily work revolves around Google products. And there are some tools that I simply can’t avoid, such as Gmail and Calendar. Google will probably have access to some of my data indefinitely, but that doesn’t mean I have to give it everything I own. Together these tools create a dependency you don’t really question until you step outside of it. What bothers me isn’t just privacy concerns, but that it’s also a lot of tools to keep track of and hop between.

I’ve been self-hosting more of my productivity stack lately, and one of the options that kept popping up was CryptPad. It’s an open-source end–to-end encrypted collaborative suite for documents, and while primarily designed for teams, it’s also suitable for solo users who want a secure way to manage their documents and work files.

What exactly is CryptPad?

An all-in-one secure document suite

CryptPad is a self-hosted, open-source, privacy-focused productivity collaboration suite designed specifically as an alternative to Office 365 and Google Workspace. It offers real-time editing for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, polls, and even kanban boards, all in one, browser-based tool. Everything is encrypted by default, even when you don’t self-host it. So you completely control the content and hold the keys, which makes it a solid choice for anyone who wants more privacy for their documents or wants to keep confidential work off cloud servers.

The platform is structured around separate workspaces for different tasks. There’s a rich text document editor for writing, a spreadsheet tool, a diagram board for brainstorming, a presentation editor, a code editor, a form editor, and a kanban task manager. It covers the entire productivity pipeline, and despite mainly catering to professional teams, it works perfectly well for solo users such as myself.

Ultimately, CryptPad provides a secure and distraction-free alternative to mainstream cloud apps. It’s especially useful if you handle sensitive notes or classified and confidential information, or even just personal creative projects you don’t want tied to the cloud. Moreover, it has its own Drive feature, where all of your CryptPad documents can be safely stored and managed.

CryptPad is self-hostable

Privacy is one of its biggest selling points

You can easily set up and run CryptPad through Docker. You just create a folder for CryptPad and create the docker-compose.yml file inside it, then run docker compose up -d to start it in the background. Once it’s up, you go to the localhost ID in a browser, create an admin account, and choose the tools you want to enable. For team use or public deployments, additional configuration might be needed. You can find the full self-host guide and configurations in the GitHub repo, and CryptPad also publishes new releases on Docker Hub.

CryptPad for documents and text files

Keeping my notes and documents private

The main part I was interested in was CryptPad’s Document and Rich Text tools. These essentially replace Google Docs for me, which I used nearly every day. Document is a more advanced word processor that is integrated through OnlyOffice, another open-source office suite. Whereas Rich Text is a simpler word processor for more casual writing.

Document has stylistic and formatting options for the text such as size, font, headers, lists, colors, special characters, and so on. It also has a page index that lets you jump to headers in the document. And I really like that it has a Replace tool, which is a must-have for novel drafting when you’re constantly changing the details. Rich Text has similar formatting tools, it’s just a bit more stripped down. Plus, it lets me export my documents in .doc and Markdown formats.

It has a spreadsheet tool

No need for Google Sheets

Just like the Documents tool, CryptPad’s Sheet tool is also integrated through Only Office. And it’s very similar to Google Sheets as well as Excel, making it a suitable complete replacement. You can create multiple sheets, use formulas, sort and filter data, and apply conditional rules. For things like budgeting and project tracking, it covers everything you need.

You can create presentations and slides with CryptPad

A replacement for Google Slides

Cryptpad has two slide tools, namely Markdown Slides and Presentation. Markdown Slides is exactly what it sounds like - a workspace for creating slides in the Markdown format. It also supports things like image inserts and custom layouts. The Presentation tool is another integrated OnlyOffice tool which has a WYSIWYG editor and a toolkit of layout and design features for creating presentations.

Create and collaborate on diagrams

It replaces Google Drawing

When I first tried out CryptPad’s Diagram feature, it felt very familiar. That’s because it’s an integration of Draw.io, one of my top open-source diagramming tools. It’s the exact same layout with the same feature set. You’ve got an infinite canvas, shapes, connectors, templates, and adjustable properties for every element. It’s much more feature-rich than Google’s Drawing tool and also replaces other cloud-based diagram apps like Miro.

A private space to work

I’m not necessarily de-Googling my life, but I do want to be more intentional with my work and documents. CryptPad gives me a way to write and plan without everything being tied to one major corp’s servers by default. Even for solo work, it’s a sweet spot between usability and privacy.