Advice for a collaborative text editor

2026-06-22 09:40 UTC

Hello, I’m looking for a simple collaborative text editor. We do have an office 365 subscription and it works, but the 10 minutes loading time every time you open a document are taking a strain on my mental sanity. We don’t need nothing too fancy, markdown support would be a plus, especially with embedded latex formulas and possibly bibfile references. The things I really need are a simple ways to add comments to text and a changes view to immediately see what a collaborator modified. I’ve been taking a look at hackmd, it kind of fulfills the role, but the pricing is a bit high for the features available. Could be self hosted too, but to be fair I’d rather not have to maintain it.

Replies (9)

@whatsgoingdom@rollenspiel.forum 2026-06-22 09:49

Nextcloud + collabora online works pretty good for me.

Open ##3373117
@Lemmert@reddthat.com 2026-06-22 09:54

I personally like Cryptpad. It can be self hosted, but you can also make an acount elsewhere considering you don’t want the hastle of maintaining. Overleaf can be self hosted too

Open ##3373127
@Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 2026-06-22 10:16

HedgeDoc also seems like an option that could do some of this. Self-hostable and open source (last I checked).

Open ##3373193
@whysofurious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-06-22 11:20

I would go for hedgedoc if the team can switch to markdown, otherwise Cryptpad to stay in an office-like suite. If you already have nextcloud then that + collabora should be good enough. Otherwise installing the whole nextcloud suite just for collaborative editing seems like a lot imho.

Open ##3373408
@waigl@lemmy.world 2026-06-22 11:32

Years ago, we used to use Etherpad for that. Don’t know if that’s still a thing.

Open ##3373448
@just_another_person@lemmy.world 2026-06-22 11:27

If you’re looking for something hosted, ProtonDocs is fine, however you’ll need an account for each collaborator which could get expensive. Lots of mentions of HedgeDoc, but it’s only for Markdown. Collabora sounds more in line with what you’re looking for. Nextcloud Office might be a bit lacking.

Open ##3373464
@Ephera@lemmy.ml 2026-06-22 11:52

Gonna throw in EtherPad. It’s been like ten years, since I properly used it, but I believe, it’s relatively minimal, so pretty much just Markdown. There’s also lots of publicly hosted instances you can use: scanner.etherpad.org

Open ##3373504
@alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 2026-06-22 12:25

How about Git?

Open ##3373582
@serenissi@lemmy.world 2026-07-08 09:55

I know proprietary but overleaf seems pretty good at this in my experience.

Open ##3669170