For me personally, ocis is way better than Nextcloud for basic sharing and file sync.

When I said Nextcloud-like, I meant in function and not philosophy. So Nextcloud-like in the sense that you can do file sync, auto uploads of videos/photos from a mobile device etc

You should look into OCIS. You can set it up in minutes and it’s really fast compared to Nextcloud for basic file’s stuff (share, sync, stream, photo auto uploads).

Maybe you should give Ubuntu Server a spin. Last I tried, Nextcloud snap was the easiest way to get Nextcloud up and running.