Selfhosted @lemmy.world Otter @lemmy.ca 3w ago

A sovereign Microsoft 365 alternative: Nextcloud and IONOS join forces - Nextcloud

nextcloud.com A sovereign Microsoft 365 alternative: Nextcloud and IONOS join forces - Nextcloud

Discover the Microsoft 365 alternative by Nextcloud and IONOS: the Nextcloud Workspace office suite, launching in the course of 2025.

As organizations are looking to reclaim their digital sovereignty, IONOS and Nextcloud are building the fully featured office suite “Nextcloud Workspace”: a powerful Microsoft 365 alternative. As long-standing partners, we have the expertise to enable large companies and organizations with an all-round office suite as European answer to US products. Announced at the Nextcloud Summit earlier this month, this collaboration for digitally sovereign office software that meets the highest data protection requirements will launch in 2025.

To meet the rigorous needs of public institutions and enterprises, Nextcloud Workspace will integrate a full range of collaboration tools, including file storage and sharing, document editing, email, calendaring, video conferencing, chat, and AI-powered productivity features. Of course, this offering will be fully GDPR compliant and securely hosted in Europe.

Organizations can trust Nextcloud to deliver a fully integrated office and collaboration suite, thanks to the company’s experience in creating the world’s leading private cloud platform. IONOS, Europe’s largest cloud and hosting provider, is the ideal partner to ensure full GDPR compliance and protection from US legal exposure. Hosting will be managed exclusively in Germany, at IONOS’ extensive network of data centers.

70 comments

Oh shit

This will undoubtedly have a major impact against Microsoft and even perhaps Google.

AI-powered productivity features.

Everything is pretty sweet except ^the AI productivity features. Hopefully the AI portions are optional opt-ins rather than it being preincluded opt-outs.
- Search your heart. You know which it'll be.
  
  I don't even have to search. I already know it'll be preinstalled/hidden opt-out based on current tech industry trends :/
  
  I'd usually say that "I'm hoping for the best, prepared for the worst" but honestly at this point I think I have 0 hope, and I'm only prepared for the worst.
- I actually want AI on my Nextcloud. As long as it runs locally. We've taken thousands of pictures over the years and desperately need some help in categorising them. Unfortunately so far I wasn't able to find any reliable way to automate it.
  
  Have you tried hiring a couple humans? They're much better than AI. And you help your local (physical or virtual) economy!
- It’s all just part of their addons, so you choose yourself if you want AI. You can even choose to have local AI, if you don’t want to use an external AI, which I believe is ChatGPT.
- I have a nextcloud instance and I can confirm that the ai features are plugins, and are opt-in (and also pretty cool, as ai feature go)
It's an alternative, but IONOS honestly fucking sucks as well, so I'm feeling pretty ambivalent about this.
- What's wrong with IONOS? Their VPS prices are some of the best out there and reliability has never been an issue for me.
  
  I've had the opposite experience with their cloud services in a professional context. My biggest gripe is with United Internet, the monopolistic company that owns IONOS, 1&1 (an ISP) as well as the ad-ridden, flaming pile of garbage that are GMX and WEB.DE, two of the most popular email service providers in Germany as well as a constant source of pain for anyone operating an Email server. They will ignore common industry standards and best-practices, silently block your mailserver for absolutely no reason, not respond to inquiries and just generally make the internet a slightly worse place for small to medium sized businesses and selfhosters.
- Ionos used to be 1&1 which had a fairly poor reputation. Not sure what it's become nowadays. Apparently they haven't gotten much better.
  
  They have fairly good prices for small VPS, something like €1-2 and I cannot complain. Perfect for some small self hosting. I cannot comment on their more performant boxes.
  
  1&1 is kind of typical telco, with all the shady stuff and contracts. DSL from them is without any issues. Mobile is kind of problematic, it was fine for past 3-4 years but with their "Fancy 5G net up to 300mbps" has pretty shit so far. Last week I was abroad and my sim would not connect at all. Contacted them via online chat and they said to call them... They fixed it after like 20h
  
  Last time with customer service I was actually satisfied. Same with 1&1. They were cooperative and reasonable (unlile Vodafone and Telekom from what I heard)
- Don't have many problems with IONOS.
  Our customers are usually recommended their S3 Object Storage (Very simple price structure)
  I personally have the Business E-Mail due to it's price.
  It's a bit limited and no DKIM but sufficient for most things.
  
  It is cheap, but the performance leaves much to be desired and their technical support is piss poor.
It would be nice if they could offer alternatives for individuals with prices comparable to those of Hetzner Storage Share (which is based on NC). Somewhat, I feel every other NC hosting solution is way more expensive per GB.
- Hey, I had been searching for a reasonably priced NC hosting for a while. I even considered a VPS from Hetzner but somehow didn't find this. Thanks for pointing it out.
  
  Glad to have helped. The only issue I may have with it is that the web frontend feels a bit slow, but O mainly use it as a file sync service, so it doesn't bother me too much.
- The Hetzner Storage Share lacks a lot of features that Nextcloud IONOS have. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Hetzner has an office suite for Nextcloud?
  
  I didn't check it, tbh. Unluckily, I need almost perfect compatibility with MS Office for my job (shared documents). You're most likely right.
I am not sure what this is supposed to be announcing. I have been using the hosted nextcloud from Ionos for a few year and I can say the experience has not been good. The nextcloud version is outdated by several years, the store is locked and the service minimal.

That being said it was the most competitive provider I could find for nextcloud + collabora as a service (not all provider include it, hetzner does not)

Though I love nextcloud and I switched to a new provider this month, the office apps still need work,the se patate server they require make the ecosystem difficult to read. Still overall I am very happy to see this kind of things surfacing, as nextcloud is a very nice alternative to gsuite or o365 with a lot of avantage. Just don't go with the Ionos version.
- Just branding, market positioning
Kinda sounds awful honestly.

I do use nextcloud for my small team. It's the best of the selfhosted file sync platforms.

That said, it's obscenely over engineered.

Who ever wanted a file sync platform that also does calendaring and contacts?
- Who ever wanted a file sync platform that also does calendaring and contacts?
  
  "Who ever wanted standard features from office 365 from their office 365 competitor"
  
  Nextcloud isn't a 365 competitor?
  
  It's filesync with contacts and calendar.
  
  Even once you build in documents and spreadsheets, 365 at least has separate applications for that - its not a single overblown behemoth.
- Who ever wanted a file sync platform that also does calendaring and contacts?
  
  Most O365 & exchange users? If you just want file sync, this isn't for you. If you want a collaborative (online) office suite that can also sync files, it is. It's meant to be able to replace the whole O365 stack, which includes Outlook.
  
  You can also just not use that part, or any part you don't need. This is basic NC functionality that has been there for a very long time, so why shouldn't it be part of the package?
  
  Sure that's why I drive my 4wd anywhere i want to go - i don't want or need 4wd but I can just not use that functionality.
  
  Sorry what office suite is basic NC functionality that has been there for a long time?
- you can delete the calendaring and contacts apps
  
  No, you have to complain about them. It's the law.
Please tell me they're not writing it in php.
- Nah, it'll be CGI.
  
  Cool, I've always wanted to get back into Perl.
- I might be wrong, but it sounds like hosted nextcloud, not a completely new platform.
  
  Nextcloud is so slow and brittle, I can’t imagine scaling
- Owncloud infinite scale seems, well, much more scalable
I've moved away from Nextcloud

It is such a pain to maintain and is way complicated
- Not sure how long ago you tried it. But my first attempt at an install back in 2021 was so much more complicated than when I did it again in 2024. It's been rock solid ever since. I use the docker all-in-one method, it's pretty straightforward. When I went back to college, I decided to use it to organize all my classwork, and it's perfect for that. I still prefer LibreOffice to author papers though.
- I’ve found the docker version very easily to maintain.
- Using YunoHost saves a lot of hassles
Europe’s largest cloud and hosting provider

It's the first time I'm hearing about IONOS. Are they really larger than OVH?
- Probably a case of hidden infrastructure.
  I believe (no source) IONOS solely belongs to 1&1 AG of which 'United Internet' has a majority share (that I am sure of).
  IONOS = Business focus. Primarily hosting and services
  1&1 = End-Consumer focus. Primarily ISP and some other consumer services.
  
  I would assume they count the infrastructure they provide for both 1&1 and IONOS.
  Besides that they only have (I think) 2 DCs in Germany and 2 or 3 other locations in the EU and I think 1 in the US.
  
  So in the end I would say it's either Hetzner or OVH and then IONOS as having the most infrastructure.
Is this just hosted nextcloud with collabora office pre installed?
- Pretty much, though collabora is sold for a few additional euros/month. Not all providers for hosted nextcloud have a solution for the office apps (collabora or only office) so i've found it to be Ionos main advantage, along with very nice storage space for the price
Intentional BSOD-coloured branding?
I'm wondering what will happen to openXchange which ionos is using currently and is afaik also holding parts of. It does exactly the same.

70 comments