This is where I am right now as well. The main thing (or really the only thing in fact) I use nextcloud for now is file storage, because when it works, it works damn well. I only really need something that can upload and download files easily, which I guess there are alternative for that, but I also need to be able to share the files via link and share links where other people can upload files for me, which so far Nextcloud does the best of the bunch I’ve tried… So I’m kinda stuck on the decision to switch for now…

I’ve had feeling towards running proxmox on my homelab, but I didn’t yet felt like reinstalling and reconfiguring everything so for now its a dockerland and an extra VM for stuff that had to run separate

The simpliest way I found to do this on Windows is HFS https://www.rejetto.com/hfs/?f=intro

You still need to figure out either VPN between your computers or port forwarding to make it work over network though

Edit: and sufficiently secure it if youre planning on running it online at all times