Nextcloud versus Microsoft 365

The most deployed alternative to Office365

Capabilities

To make it easy to come to an informed decision, below we provide a high-level overview of the relative strengths and weaknesses of both products.

 

Nextcloud Hub
Pricing at 1000 users (basic to extensive option) $19000 – $75000 $48000 – $325,000/year
On-Premises/self-hosted
Easy migration
Vendor lock-in means you can’t easily migrate to another solution
Open Source
Access to source code means you can audit the code and adjust functionality
Access through API
Enables third party apps to interact with service
Extensible through apps
Over 200 apps available
Only interaction through limited API

Storage and sync features
Maximum storage Unlimited Depends on plan
Max file size Unlimited 10 GB
Number of files Unlimited 20000

Infrastructure integration
LDAP/AD any number and type of user directories max 1 AD connection
SAML/Shibboleth
Other auth solutions Kerberos, OpenID, OAuth2, CAS
direct connection to Samba or MySQL
and more		 None
File storage solutions WND/Sharepoint/NFS/Object Storage/FTP
and many more		 WND/SharePoint

Privacy, control and security
Full Audit trail Unlimited Limited to 90 days for some data
Protection of metadata
GDPR compliance 100% certified Risky due to Cloud Act
Encryption Always on own infrastructure Server-side in MS data center

Communication and collaboration
One-on-one and group audio/video chat
Data and metadata remain on premise
Access to calls and files for third parties (guests) without account
E2E encrypted one-on-one calls

Other features
Social network features
Online Office
Groupware
mail server not included
Task/project management
Kanban, task list. No GANT chart view currently
Workspaces
(a collaborative space associated with each folder for context, todo lists, notes etc)
Mobile Device Management (Block devices, remote wipe, notification to devices)
Strictly enforce data and meta data locality
Limited Guest accounts
Secure Mailbox
(Outlook add-in sending email body & attachments only through secure server)
Protect shares with password, expiration date
Video Verification
(enforce video call with recipient to verify identity before granting access to share)
Ransomware Recovery
(automated recovery of data after ransomware attack based on file analysis)
Only time-based, after detection of ransomware based on file names. Risks overwriting useful changes and missing ransomware without predictable names.
No vendor lock-in
Make it easy to migrate to another solution by using open standards