Apologies if this has been posted here before (rule 4), but my search turned out empty, hence I felt it was okay to ask.
TL;DR: As the title suggests, I am looking for recommendations for software for real time collaboration in a spreadsheet-like manner. I myself would prefer Proton Sheets (I already have a paid plan), but I wanted to hear people’s experiences with it, and what alternatives there are.
Some people/strangers and I, in my neighbourhood, have come together to start a volunteering group for building a workshop that the community can make use of. In relation to this, we need a simple way to track different things, tasks, and who’s doing what and when. Think of inventory, shifts, etc. The group mentioned they would be happy with Google Sheets, but as someone who left the Google ecosystem years ago, I am not keen on going back, and would really like a great alternative that is as easy to use.
The group is a healthy mix of young technically competent people, professional carpenters, and older people not so great at using computers, thus it is important that its easy to sign up and use.
I realise the solution does not need to be a spreadsheet-like service, but that was something the group seemed to agree to be easy enough to use. I would be grateful if anyone here had a better solution though.
Perhaps I just need to suck it up, and create a new Google email for only this, but since we will not be using any enterprise plan or similar, my guess is that our data will be fed to an LLM for training. It also involves my private life, so I would really like to avoid this.
I agree that Nextcloud with Collabora might be your way to go here, but this line made me think: maybe kanban board would be more what you need? I use Nextcloud’s Deck for that, but even the devs say it’s not production ready and it is true. It gets slow with more cards
Other software like this. From my notes, not vetted, not checked, just gathered in case I want to migrate out of Deck. Should be mostly open-sourcish
Of course, NC provides a lot more, you could even have your own Meet (Nextcloud Talk), so maybe it’s a good idea to have it anyway
Also, there is OpenCloud. IIRC correctly there is some history between NC and OC but I don’t remember the details
EDIT: since you initially started with searching for a service, there are offers where you maintain the NC but the most technical part is done by a company. I remember Elest and Hetzner but probably there are more