paperless-ngx VS Docspell

I steered a friend towards Paperless (and away from an LLM solution) as a way of searching/accessing GBs of architectural PDFs recently - so far, it’s apparently working well for them.

https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx

Paperless-ngx is a document management system that transforms your physical documents into a searchable online archive so you can find your physical documents easier. With features such as tags, full text search, multi-user permissions system, this is a dream for those who like to keep an organized folder of files and documents.

Since last year I’ve been configuring and maintaining my homelab setup and it is just amazing.

I’ve learned so much about containers, virtual machines and networking. Some of the self hosted applications like paperless-ngx [1] and immich [2] are much superior in terms of features than the proprietary cloud solutions.

With the addition of VPN services like tailscale [3] now I can access my homelab from anywhere in the world.

The only thing missing is to setup a low powered machine like NUC or any mini PC so I can offload the services I need 24/7 and save electricity costs.

If you can maintain it and have enough energy on weekends to perform routine maintenance and upgrades. I would 100% recommend setting up your own homelab.

[1] https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/

This has been posted a few times already, but I cannot tell you how life changing Paperless NGX is for organizing PDFs. As someone who wrangles all of the insurance and bills for my house, this open source software is so damn good.

https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/

I maintain Bash script to quickly set it up locally on Linux with Podman. Give it a spin if you want to kick the tires.

https://github.com/jdoss/ppngx

Personally, I use https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup to archive all my emails and then only keep them on the remote server for as long as I need to (basically until I read them and respond or download an attachment into https://docs.paperless-ngx.com )

I came across Bigcapital and I haven't tested it out yet but I have used Paperless NGX before. Can the two integrate together?

I've been using Paperless for several years now very happily and can recommend it over my previous system, also Google Drive. During the transition I found it helpful to set up a cron which (A) made an export of Paperless and (B) uploaded that export to a Google Drive folder.

One feature which seems to be quite a nice improvement (speculating as I haven't upgraded yet) is consumption templates [0]. My workflow involves an ADF scanner with an Android application, sharing the scanned PDF with Paperless Share [1] and then it's uploaded to the server via API. It seems that consumption templates will enable adjusting tags/sharing settings/permissions of a document at ingestion time based on where it's ingested from.

[0] https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/pull/4196

[1] https://github.com/qcasey/paperless_share

One feature that isn't mentioned on this release that I was looking for before actually got added in the RC1 for 2.0.0:

https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/releases/tag/...

paperless-ngx (https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/)

Check https://docspell.org it is pretty good, if u don’t mind keeping your docs in a db

git clone https://github.com/eikek/docspell

I don't know about their features but apart from Mayan and Paperless-NG there are also Docspell, Papermerge, Iodestone, Hermes and Teedy.

another alternative isDocSpell

Docspell had some votes in this comment from a few days ago

I use Docspell for that.

I am trying to get Docspell working on Unraid since I prefer it over paperless-ngx in terms of functions and usability.

Apart from Paperless-NG and Papermerge there's also Docspell, Lodestone, LogicalDOC, Mayan, Teedy and probably more but I don't think that any of them might keep the structure.

I'm using https://docspell.org/ It works like a charm, give it a try 🙂