How appropriate is Syncthing for my use case? (dropbox drop wannabe)

User Stories
1

I have been using dropbox since a couple of years. Since the ext4 thing, I have been looking into alternatives. I passed next/owncloud, because I don’t want to manage a VPS for that purpose (though, it’s my next alternative). I really liked the idea of having my stuff decentralized.

I have trying to look for ST use cases, but I failed to find one, so I ask here if you can help me to see if ST can help me trough my use case.

I have around 20 gbs in Dropbox and my main workstation (something like a full “sync” with dropbox). Every other machine (5) has different folders (“selective folder sync”, I don’t remember the specific DB lingo), also I have my phone which have the DB app installed and occasionally I use it to access documents from there. Every machine has a different set of folders shared, personal stuff, work stuff, photos, books, ecc.

Is there anyway to configure ST to behave that way? I’m guessing a combination of .stignore directives, but I’m not sure if it’s the correct way or it will be turned into a hell.

PS.- I wasn’t sure where to post this, so, I’m sorry if this is not the right place.

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In contrast to Dropbox, you can have as many shared folders as you want, so you don’t have to use .stignore to sync only specific files / folders to specific devices. But if only one device has all shared folders, that one needs to be powered on and connected for the other devices to be able to send / receive changes.

Syncthing itself is a sync tool, so if you “use it to access documents from” you phone, you will either have to sync the folder and maybe use .stignore to sync only what you want on your phone, or use Syncthing Lite to access files on demand.

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I understand, I’m used to have everything on a specific shared folder. Maybe the first thing would be to approach my use case different. I mean, like have a specific folder shared for my work, and not one “humongous 20 gb folder”.

Syncthing Lite sounds awesome for that specific use case.