Recommendation A centralised contacts/address book that doesn't involve Google?

[Throbbing Angel]

https://alternative.to is always my first stop for questions like this teuchter

There is a page on alternatives to Google Contacts https://alternativeto.net/software/google-contacts/

Can't vouch for how good any of them are but a lot of them seem to sync which you state as a requirement

Have you thought about switching to ZoHo?

 

[stdP]

I'd like my contacts list to be provider-agnostic, like my email is.

As kalmatthew's already pointed out, does your mail provider not also give a shared calendar service...?

I run my own CalDAV/CardDAV server so I don't bother with the limited one my external mail provider has, but I'd figured it was relatively standard feature...

For file-based copies, vCard aka VCF is the standard format used for interchange (if your current address book deigns to support exporting to it) although CSVs are usually easier to bodge.

I think there was a synch plugin that no longer works with the latest version of Thunderbird. But I believe they're working on adding synch to the next major update which should be out sometime in the next few months.

Cardbook...? S'what I use for contact syncing in TB currently. I'm still on a relatively ancient version of Thunderbird however. Would be nice if it supported it natively of course like most third-party clients...

The standard protocol is LDAP
It is possible.
It is geeky and hard.

Whilst it's certainly possible to do it just over LDAP, it's not very easy - especially if you plan to do it over t'interwebs. However, if you're got something like a NAS most of those have support for running an Active Directory domain controller these days (which incorporates an LDAP server), or a plain LDAP server. Do clients other than TB support this though...? Without doing a lot of digging I don't recall seeing it very often. Sharing access to this over the internet needs to be thought very long and hard about however - I certainly wouldn't do it without putting it behind a VPN gateway.

Alternatively on the geeky side, setting up your own OwnCloud/NextCloud instance - basically a server package that supports things like file and calendar sync - is a possibility, although IIRC some client-side software is usually required. But it also involves setting up your own server somewhere, natch, so it's not everyone's cuppa tea.

 

[teuchter]

As kalmatthew's already pointed out, does your mail provider not also give a shared calendar service...?

By mail provider do you mean my web hosting company?

I think I've come to the conclusion that trying to set something up for contacts is way too fiddly relative to the benefits.

The email client on my phone uses the Android/google contacts, so Google has been successful in basically trapping me to use that as my main repository, or at least, I have to have all my contacts there anyway, if I want them available on my phone.

 

[kalmatthew]

By mail provider do you mean my web hosting company?

I think I've come to the conclusion that trying to set something up for contacts is way too fiddly relative to the benefits.

The email client on my phone uses the Android/google contacts, so Google has been successful in basically trapping me to use that as my main repository, or at least, I have to have all my contacts there anyway, if I want them available on my phone.

You say the email client on your phone, who provides the email server? Because if you want lowish effort that's the first place to look for contacts/calander.

 

[xenon]

Why doesn’t this exist, or maybe it does. But a standalone address book that mail clients can read from and write to. with tags for business, personal et cetera. I use Microsoft Apple and Google for various things. They all have their own fucking address books it’s a ridiculous scenario in 2024. The Outlook address book is particularly awful. Contact groups. Exchange address book. I don’t fucking know I just need to email John Smith. I don’t give a shit which address book is in. just one standalone file that you can back up like any other instead of all this embedded stuff.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

Why doesn’t this exist, or maybe it does. But a standalone address book that mail clients can read from and write to. with tags for business, personal et cetera. I use Microsoft Apple and Google for various things. They all have their own fucking address books it’s a ridiculous scenario in 2024. The Outlook address book is particularly awful. Contact groups. Exchange address book. I don’t fucking know I just need to email John Smith. I don’t give a shit which address book is in. just one standalone file that you can back up like any other instead of all this embedded stuff.

Same and completely agree. This should be a thing in 2024.

 

[two sheds]

Thunderbird seems to have synchronized most of my email addresses now

 

[teuchter]

Why doesn’t this exist, or maybe it does. But a standalone address book that mail clients can read from and write to.

Yes exactly! I assumed something like this would exist - but for some reason it doesn't, as far as I can work out.

 

[teuchter]

You say the email client on your phone, who provides the email server? Because if you want lowish effort that's the first place to look for contacts/calander.

The email server is hosted by my web hosting company. And as far as I can see, they don't offer anything that can act as a central repository of contacts that I can point any email client at.