Webinar overview: Meet CryptPad, the open-source alternative to mainstream office suites

Yes, it can, but it is not officially supported. Podman is used by some people with CryptPad, though no detailed setup guidance was given during the webinar.

This came up as a use case rather than a technical question. The session itself was meant to demonstrate that kind of scenario: secure collaboration, private sharing, and team workflows built around end-to-end encryption.

Not at the moment. There are no direct video conferencing connectors built into CryptPad today. In practice, it can be used alongside tools like Jitsi or BigBlueButton rather than through a native integration.

In CryptPad, the link itself grants access. That is part of the system’s design. Access links are cryptographically strong secret links, so the model depends on keeping them private rather than on the server reading and controlling the content. For more secure sharing, the recommended method is to share directly with contacts, because in that case the document links do not leave CryptPad’s encrypted environment. If a link ends up with the wrong people, one workaround is to destroy the document or make a copy and remove the original.

There are 3 ways to share a document: sharing with contacts, sharing a link, and embedding. In each case, access rights can be set to authorize the recipient to edit the document, or to only view it.

Documents can be shared with View access, which gives read-only access without editing the document. There is also a View once and self-destruct option for one-time read-only access, and a Present mode for rendered read-only output in Code/Markdown and Slides.

Indeed, this behavior can be confusing. A clearer “where to save” feature is on the roadmap, but there is no confirmed timeline for when it will be implemented.

Yes. If someone has the link, they can access the document. In CryptPad, the link acts as the access token, so the protection comes from keeping it secret rather than from the server reading and controlling the content.

This topic had largely been covered already during the webinar itself, and attendees were invited to ask follow-up questions if they needed more details.

There are currently no official CryptPad partners in Argentina.

The Scalable Server project is already in production, as we detailed on our latest status. It was deployed earlier than planned because usage had grown quickly, and it appears to be holding up well so far. The multi-machine part is still to come, being funded via NLnet.

Some roadmap elements had already been covered during the session, like the latest Winter release and the Scalable Server. Also, in the presentation were mentioned upcoming diagram improvements and the CryptPad Notes project, which is expected to bring a more modern text editor based on BlockNote.

Not yet in an easy automated way. There is currently no simple migration tool from Google Workspace. Because the server cannot read user data, it cannot run the kind of background import jobs that mainstream suites can. For now, the best option is to import files into the drive and open them in the relevant app. For email, we recommend Tuta.

XWiki and CryptPad will continue as separate products. For public documentation websites, XWiki is the better fit, since building public documentation in CryptPad through shared links would become complicated.

Users do. The encryption key is held through the user’s own credentials, which is one of the reasons service administrators cannot see user data stored on the server.

A VPS with 2 CPUs and 2 GB RAM are the minimum prerequisites and should be sufficient. In the documentation, OnlyOffice is an optional component in installation. During the webinar, it was explained that OnlyOffice is still integrated with CryptPad, but maintained separately because the codebase is large and complex. That makes installation more modular and avoids unnecessary downloads.

No MSP-style partner model is currently in place for CryptPad. That kind of setup would be welcome, and it was noted that this is more common on the XWiki SAS side at the moment.

Funding has already been secured through the CryptPad Notes project. The work is expected to start later this year, though the Scalable Server work took priority and delayed the start.

The main recommendation is to match the workspace structure to actual needs. During the webinar, teams, shared drives, shared folders, roles, and granular sharing options were shown as the main tools for organizing daily work more effectively. The documentation also shows that teams have distinct roles: Viewers, Members, Admins, and Owners, each with different permissions for viewing, editing, member management, and team management.

That behavior is not expected, especially after recent server improvements. The first thing to check is the browser environment, especially extensions known to interfere with CryptPad. If the problem continues, the recommended next step is to open a support request so the issue can be investigated.

Yes. CryptPad subscriptions are based on drives rather than seats. Shared users can benefit from the storage of the drive without each needing a separate subscription.

Not cleanly, at least not yet. Prototypes related to this exist, but there is currently no funded implementation plan. In the meantime, the suggested workarounds include access lists, making a copy, and destroying the original document. The Access List is a way to restrict access so that users who are not on the list cannot open the document, even if they already have it in their CryptDrive.

Historically, CryptPad has relied primarily on strong encryption to manage access control. An actor possessing the symmetric key associated with a channel is generally considered to have irrevocable access to its contents.

Not at the moment. CryptPad supports several identity scenarios through SSO, but not this kind of Active Directory discovery. It is an interesting feature and something the team would be open to in the future, but it's not currently a roadmap priority.

Only within the same spreadsheet document, across tabs. Cross-document linking of that kind is not possible at the moment because the server does not know the content and cannot move data between documents on the user’s behalf. The same limitation is why form results cannot be kept automatically in sync with a separate spreadsheet.

On cryptpad.fr, free users and teams get a 1 GB drive. On self-hosted instances, storage limits can be set by the administrator. CryptPad supports its own native app formats, common office formats through its editors, and static files such as images, video, audio, and PDFs. Paid accounts offer flexible storage with user and team drives and up to 150 MB file uploads.

Not at the moment, if ECS refers to an S3-style object storage backend such as Elastic Cloud Storage. CryptPad relies on append-only log reads and writes that do not map well to that kind of storage, so this is not currently supported and is not on the roadmap at the moment.

For a specific document causing issues, the best route is to use the support function in cryptpad.fr and, if possible, share an edit link so engineers can inspect the exact spreadsheet and formula setup.

Not at the moment. Support for that would first require an API, and funding is currently being sought for that work. Once such an API exists, it could make it possible to build other clients, including a CLI, to work with documents or create users.