What is Nextcloud?

Nextcloud allows you to securely store various types of data on the cloud via web hosting. The data types stored by Nextcloud include:

• Files (documents, audio, video, photos, etc.)
• Contacts
• Calendars
• To-do lists
• Favorites

Nextcloud is a free and open-source software solution that distinguishes itself by being self-hosted. This means instead of having to subscribe to a cloud service that’s hosted on a company’s servers, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, and many others, you are free to host your Nextcloud instance wherever you please. That way, you have full control over your cloud server and its configuration.

To add more services to Nextcloud’s already powerful file-sharing capabilities, you can also install many add-ons designed for specific purposes. For example, you may integrate other file-sharing platforms into Nextcloud’s interface to help centralize and integrate your file management strategy.

Because Nextcloud was designed with collaboration in mind, its large community regularly releases new plugins. Among available Nextcloud plugins, you can find a complete video conferencing solution, a password manager, a software suite, and more.

Nextcloud started out as a fork of ownCloud. But, today they’re Nextcloud and ownCloud are very distinct products offering different services. While ownCloud has both a free-to-use open-source project and a separate proprietary Enterprise Edition, Nextcloud provides the same core code to both its free and paying users.

When you compare ownCloud Enterprise Edition to Nextcloud’s Industry solutions, Nextcloud comes out on top, with features such as:

• Integrated audio calls, video calls, and text chats
• Groupware (calendars, contacts, emails, etc.)
• Video verification
• Accessibility features (WCAG 2.1, dyslexia-friendly fonts, etc.)
• Whitelists
• Real-time notifications

And much, much more.

Thanks to Nextcloud’s WebDav protocol, you can access your Nextcloud server via the file manager, whether it on Windows, Mac OS or GNU/Linux. These platforms, as well as the mobile operating systems Android and iOS, also feature synchronization software that may be used to mirror the contents of your Nextcloud server onto your physical device.

Self-hosting (installing Nextcloud on your own webserver) should only be done by those with sufficient knowledge to properly secure their instance. For everyone else, we recommend an hosting with an automated installation of Nextcloud, which you can get from a regular web hosting service like Gandi’s Simple Hosting.

Once set up, you can access your Nextcloud instance using any modern web browser through a dedicated URL, using your Nextcloud username and password. You may also use software to synchronize your Nextcloud with your local files so you can access your files directly on your computer.