Nextcloud
Germany
Self-hosted productivity, file sync and collaboration platform.
European Alternative to:
Self-hosted file sync and collaboration software, started in 2016 by Frank Karlitschek after he forked it from ownCloud. The company is in Stuttgart, but the point is that you host it yourself: on your own server, a NAS at home, or a European provider. The data stays where you put it.
More than file storage
- File sync and sharing with desktop and mobile clients, plus versioning and federated sharing between servers
- Nextcloud Talk for chat and voice or video calls
- Calendar and contacts over CalDAV and CardDAV
- Office documents in the browser via Collabora or OnlyOffice
- Mail, Deck (kanban), forms, notes, and a large app store for the rest
Why people pick it
It's open source under the AGPL, so there's no vendor holding your data hostage. It has also become a common choice in the European public sector. Parts of the German federal administration and a number of universities run it. You can host it yourself for free; Nextcloud GmbH sells support subscriptions for organisations that want an SLA.
The catch
Someone has to run the server. For a home lab that's a weekend project; for an organisation it's a real responsibility: updates, backups, scaling. If you don't want that, a managed Nextcloud provider gets you most of the benefit without the maintenance.
