Tech to Avoid Big Tech
There are a lot of very good reasons to NOT use the services of big tech companies and this is not that article. There are other very good sources as to why this is a good idea. If you believe you “have nothing to hide” then you really should do your own research as to why that is not a valid argument. Instead, the focus of this post is to share what some of the best alternatives are that you can deploy yourself, often using free open source projects. It is more of a list than a ‘how to’ based upon my experience using various options and selecting what worked best for me.
| Service or Functions | Best Alternative |
|---|---|
| Google Photos | SyncThing to upload photos from cell phone to server. Immich for viewing and sharing photos. |
| Android and IPhones | GrapheneOS on a Pixel, or LineageOS – Android Open Source Project on other phones |
| Google GMail | Shared Hosting CPanel account with RoundCube, mailchannels, K-9 Mail on Android, synchronize Contacts and Calendar with DAVx5 on Android. For completely self hosted there is docker-mailserver and mailcow; two excellent projects |
| Contacts and Calendar | Radicale with a plugin to authenticate with email server |
| Search | SearXNG |
| Password Safe | VaultWarden server and BitWarden browser plugin |
| Ring and Other Cloud Cameras | Frigate NVR with Coral Edge TPU and Home Assistant integration |
| Music Services | Navidrome server, Tempo on Android to play music |
| Landline Phone Service | FreePBX, Obi200, with BulkVS trunk (a simpler but slightly more expensive option is Voip.ms which is feature rich and can work directly with your Obi200). Stay away from Telnyx! |
| WiFi Access Point | OpenWRT |
| Router | OPNsense |
| Google Push Notifications, Pushbullet and others | Gotify |
| Home automation | Home Assistant and Node-RED |
| DNS service and Ad Blocking | AdGuard Home or PiHole, and Unbound as a recursive DNS server |
| Media Server | Jellyfin and/or Kodi on NVidia Shield, HDHomeRun |
| Life360 (location tracking) | GPSLogger or OwnTracks from the F-Droid store |
| SMS Instant Messaging | Signal (while the company behind it has issues it seems to suffice for now). Also Prosidy is better for completely secure and self hosted since Signal is losing SMS support |
| Android YouTube | NewPipe |
| Google Maps | Open Street Maps |
| Remote Access | WireGuard |
| Dropbox file sharing | Apache WebDAV or Seafile |
| Document scanning | PaperlessNGX |
| Virtualization | Proxmox |
Last updated: Oct 31, 2025
While this is mostly a complete list of software running in my environment there are some python scripts that I have written over time to glue some of these pieces together in a seamless fashion so that stuff ‘just works’. As time permits I will be sharing these projects in more detail along with those scripts for anyone interested. For now I thought that this list could serve as a useful reference of what I have found to be some of the best alternatives to big tech services. I am sure this list will evolve over time.