CryptPad

What CryptPad is

CryptPad is a collection of office tools in the browser: text, spreadsheets, presentations, kanban board, forms and whiteboard. Several people can write in the same document at the same time and see each other's cursors move, just like in the usual cloud services.

The difference is the encryption. Everything you write is encrypted in your own browser before it is sent, and the key is in the link, not on the server. Whoever runs the server cannot read your documents even if someone asks them to. That sounds like a detail until you are sitting with customer records, price negotiations or a business idea you do not want your competitors to see.

Using CryptPad on Windows and Linux Mint

There is no program to install. CryptPad runs in the browser, and it looks the same on Windows as on Mint.

1. Go to cryptpad.fr, which is run by the developers themselves. At cryptpad.org/instances there are more open instances, including in Germany and Austria, if you would rather have the server closer.
2. Click Register. Choose a username and password.
3. Write down the password in the company password vault before you click on. Read the paragraph at the bottom about why that step cannot be postponed.
4. If you want CryptPad as its own icon: open the page in Chrome or Edge, go to the menu with three dots and choose to install the page as an app.

Three things to do first

1. Create a team. Teams is in the left sidebar. A team gives the company a shared folder where the documents stay even when the person who created them is not logged in.
2. Test how sharing works. Click Share in a document and compare the two modes: a link that only lets the recipient read, and one that lets the recipient write. Send the right kind of link to the right person, because the link is the key, and anyone with a write link can change the document, delete content, invite more people and do all that without you getting a single notification that it happened. If you want extra protection, you can put a password on the link when you share, or limit access to named contacts.
3. Set up the budget in a spreadsheet and invite the whole company. That is the file most people need to touch, and the one that otherwise ends up as five different versions in a group chat.

The most common trap

If you forget the password, there is no reset. No button, no email, no support that can help. This is not carelessness on the developers' part but a direct consequence of how the encryption works: the server has never seen the content in plain text, and therefore cannot unlock it for anyone. Write the password in the vault right away, the same day.

The second trap hits those who do not register at all. Documents created without an account count as guest documents, and CryptPad's documentation states that storage is limited to three months of inactivity, counted per document. A document that no one has opened for several months can therefore be gone when you need it for the annual accounts.

So register, and put important documents in the team's folder. Also export anything that needs to remain in the long term to PDF or a spreadsheet file; a document that only exists behind a link is a document you do not really own.