A Guide for Organizations

Every modern organizaztion needs technology to operate. This tech is most likely to come from Microsoft, whether it's Windows on laptops of Office 365 in the cloud. While great for Microsoft, companies that subscibe to their licenses are paying for a product or service that they can't control.

True data sovereignty is possible without giving up ownership of your data or paying for expensive subscriptions.

Choosing alternatives

To self-host or not to self-host?

Not every group has an "IT guru" to run a server, but setting one up has become much easier nowadays. Explore these guides to see if self-hosting is for you.

The tools

These are five of the most common categories of tech that collective organizations use.

Collaborate - Office Tools and Groupware
Communicate - Messaging and Email
Coordinate - Events
Connect - Video Streaming and Image Sharing
Contribute - Donations

Table of Sovereign Services

	Hosted by third-party	Managed by LT or self-hosted	For the ultra-paranoid
Collaborate
File Storage / Collaboration Suites	Proton Drive	Nextcloud	Encrypted containers/Syncthing
Consensus Tools	Loomio Cloud	Loomio	-
Password Management	Bitwarden	Vaultwarden	Local-only manager
Communicate
Email	ProtonMail	Stalwart Mail	-
Video Conferencing	Jitsi Meet	Jitsi Meet	Signal/SimpleX
Private Messaging	Signal
Private + Anonymous Messaging	SimpleX public relays	SimpleX private relays	Briar
Team Messaging (federated/private)	Find Homeserver	Matrix	Non-federated Matrix?
Team Messaging (private)	Rocket.Chat, Zulip	Rocketchat, Zulip, Jami	-
Out-of-band Messaging	-	Meshtastic	Meshtastic
SecureDrop	-	SecureDrop	SecureDrop
Coordinate
Events Calendar	Find Homeserver	Mobilizon	-
Connect
Image Sharing	Find Homeserver	Pixelfed	-
Video Sharing	Find Homeserver	Peertube	-
Podcasting	Find Homeserver	Owncast	-
Webhosting	Find Hosting, GitLab Pages	Wordpress	Tor site
Contribute
Donations	LiberaPay, Open Collective	Monero (Self-hosted only)	Monero