Nextcloud Talk

The first privacy-respecting collaboration platform for online collaboration through meetings, chat and webinars. All in one application.

Why Nextcloud Talk?

Nextcloud Talk empowers secure collaboration for hybrid teams, enhancing productivity and connectivity from anywhere.

Take back the control

Stay in control over your data and improve the resiliency of your critical communication platform! Nextcloud Talk offers digital sovereignty without vendor lock-in and dependencies on proprietary vendors. Its open-source architecture enables organizations to customize Talk to meet specific needs and integrate it into existing systems.

Nextcloud Talk is ideal for on-premises private cloud deployments or hosting with a trusted, local provider!

Unlock advanced collaboration

Nextcloud Talk makes hybrid work easy. It combines chat, video calls, and webinars together with file sharing and document editing within a single application, supported by advanced AI-driven features designed to simplify daily workflows.

Collaborate with your colleagues on documents directly within chats or calls, or have a real-time brainstorming session with the whiteboard. For more mindfulness at work, Nextcloud talk comes with built-in functions for a healthier meeting culture.

Highly secure and compliant

With self-hosting options and robust data protection, Nextcloud Talk offers the security and compliance you need, without sacrificing control. It’s the first GDPR-compliant, private cloud collaboration tool that consolidates all essential functions for efficient collaboration in one application, and the only complete collaboration platform also deployable in airgap environments.

Main features

Nextcloud Talk lowers the barrier for communications and lets your team connect anytime, anywhere, on any device, with each other, customers or partners.

Download on App Store
Get it on Google Play

A platform you can trust

Nextcloud Talk is the only solution that consolidates all essential functions for efficient collaboration into a single application, while ensuring full data control and independence. It’s the only high security collaboration platform also deployable in airgap environments.

It benefits from the many security, encryption and authentication capabilities of Nextcloud. It’s multi-layered encryption, brute force protection, artificial-intelligence based suspicious login detection, password-less login and the backing of our USD 10.000 security bug bounty program provide customers the confidence that their communication and collaboration remains confidential.

Nextcloud Security

Compliance

Self-hosting communication simplifies compliance with national and international privacy and security regulations. By relying on existing, vetted infrastructure, your current compliance and security processes apply to Nextcloud Talk.

GDPR, CCPA and more

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) makes organizations liable for any violations of user privacy and deviations from a high data security standard.
Legislation like the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018) brings similar regulation to other countries.
Nextcloud has extensive GDPR compliance capabilities.

ePrivacy Regulation

The upcoming EU ePrivacy Regulation is designed as a complement to the GDPR. The objective is to reinforce trust and security in the Digital Single Market by ensuring that electronic communications from Europeans are confidential regardless of the technology used. The ePrivacy Regulation protects the confidentiality of electronic communications and information on devices, independently whether it is personal or non-personal data.

Nextcloud is designed to protect the confidentiality of communications and fully prepares customers for the upcoming ePrivacy Regulation.

Why metadata and self hosting matter

Metadata, often described as everything except the content of your communications, has less legal protections but can be incredibly revealing. From a list of who somebody talks to and when, much can be inferred!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains it well on their site.

Of course, service providers might promise not to store and track such meta data, but governments can simply force them if need be. For example, in the UK providers have been forced to record the website visits of their customers.

And that is not even mentioning the fact that even privacy-focused companies can suddenly be sold to a foreign entity. Like with the content of communication, the best way to protect metadata is to ensure it never leaks from your infrastructure in the first place.

Benefits

Key capabilities

  • Remove and ban participants
  • Recording consent in meetings for more privacy
  • Interactive widgets, message editing and federated chatting
  • Invite to calls via phone number
  • “Note to self” – a personal safe space in Talk
  • Conversation filters (see only rooms with mentions or unread messages)
  • List open conversations
  • Show “Talking time” in participants list during a call
  • Group system message (X, Y and … others joined the call)
  • 60 minute call popup (warning at 1 hour mark – to help avoid those endless meetings)
  • Basic text formatting (bold/italics/strike-through/headings, bullet lists, code and more)
  • Webhook based bots allow writing chat bots that integrate various third party services into Nextcloud
  • New Pexip integration – Manage and access Pexip calls from within Talk, Calendar, Mail or other locations in Nextcloud through the Smart Picker
  • User typing notification
  • Custom chat icon/avatar
  • Mention a group in your chat
  • Call reactions 🤩👍🎉
  • Smart Picker feature
  • Smart Picker linking to an user profile
  • Call transcripts of recorded video calls
  • Custom background / blurring it in calls
  • Translation integration with Nextcloud Translate
  • Record and track every call
  • Easy screen sharing
  • Self-hosted, no leaking of metadata
  • Permission management by moderators
  • Encrypted, peer-to-peer audio/video calls
  • Integration with Nextcloud Files and Groupware
  • WebRTC for cross-platform support
  • Mobile calls & chat with push notifications
  • Powerful bridging capabilities with other platforms
  • Commands to enable integration with other tools
  • Jump start conversations in breakout rooms
  • Individual and group calls & chat
  • Webinars & public video conferencing with lobby (needs Nextcloud Talk High Performance Backend)
  • Mobile apps for Android and iOS
  • SIP bridge: dial in by phone to a call (needs Nextcloud Talk High Performance Backend)
  • Join the same conversation and call from multiple devices
  • Send voice messages, share your location or contact details
  • Add groups to a conversation and new group members will automatically be added as participants
  • A preview of your audio and video is shown before joining a call
  • Assign general and individual permissions to participants
  • React to chat message
  • Quick and easy polls
  • In the sidebar you can find an overview of the latest shared items
  • Configure an expiration time for chat messages
  • Start calls without notifying others in big conversations. You can send individual call notifications once the call has started.
  • Send chat messages without notifying the recipients in case it is not urgent
  • beta apps for Talk on the desktop

Nextcloud Talk comparison

Keep your online conversations, meetings and video conferencing private and secure with Nextcloud Talk.
Find below a comparison with a number of video chat solutions on the market.

Nextcloud Talk
Zoom
Google Meet
Slack
Discord
Jitsi
On-prem hostable Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Included Included Included
Open source Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Included Included Included
Desktop client Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Included
Mobile client Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Included
Phone dial-in Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Included Included Not included
Phone dial-out Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Included Not included Not included
Breakout rooms Included Included Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included
Stream to YouTube Not included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Search messages Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Filter conversations Included Included Not included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included
AI Assistant features Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Note-taking/editing Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Included Included
Office document editing Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Public office document editing (edit via public link) Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Accessibility features (screen reader support, dyslectic font, high contrast mode) Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Federation Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Included
Push notifications Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Together mode Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Message reminders Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Silent messages Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Call recording Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included Included Not included
Moderation & lobby Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included Included Included
Voting/polls Included Included Included Included Stack polls add-on Simple polls bot Included Included Included
Background blur & custom backgrounds Included Included Included Included Not included Included Included Included Not included
Rich interactive widgets Included Not included Not included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
View time zones or local time of colleagues Included Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Outlook integration to send invitations Included Included Included Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included
Note to self Included Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Filters in video calls Not included Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Quick slash commands Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Bots Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Included
Threads Roadmap Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Format messages Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Chat reactions (emojis) Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Not included
Animated reactions in call Included Included Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included
Message drafts Included Not included Not included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Waiting music Included Not included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Generate transcript Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Live captioning Roadmap Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Live translations Roadmap Included Included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included Not included
Integration with calendar app Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included Included Not included
Sidebar view in calls Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Included Not included Included
Profile cards Included Included Included Not included Included Included Not included Not included Not included
Anonymous access Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Included Included
Guest accounts Included Included Not included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included
User status Included Included Included Included Included Included Not included Not included Included
Send message later Not included Included Included Not included Included Not included Not included Not included Not included

Based on public information to our best knowledge, gathered June 7, 2024. We understand the world is constantly changing, if you see we missed a feature or made a mistake, let us know. You can use our contact form.

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Scalability

Easy for private use

Nextcloud Talk is designed for easy installation and operation. Nextcloud hosts a STUN server to facilitate usage behind firewalls and we recommend the installation of a local TURN server to improve connectivity further. Note that calls get fully routed through a TURN server, causing a lot of network traffic.

The peer-to-peer nature of Talk does inflate network traffic, creating one incoming and sending stream per other participant. This places practical limitations on calls that depend on network capabilities. A typical private Nextcloud Talk setup should handle dozens of calls with each up to 6-10 participants, up to 20 if all participants have a good network connection and do not use video. Enterprise limits, however, are in the thousands of participants per call.

Scaling in enterprise setup

To help with scaling, Nextcloud lowers video quality automatically and disables video on large calls. Sending audio and video, as well as the compute power required to decode the video streams on clients, are the biggest limiting factors, with most asymetric internet connections bottlenecked on upstream bandwidth and laptops and mobile devices especially having trouble decoding multiple video streams.

The High Performance Back-end offered by Nextcloud solves the bandwidth bottleneck and allows scaling a single call to much larger numbers of participants, up to hundreds or even thousands.

Scaling further: webinars, school classes

High Performance Back-end

Webinars and other large scale broadcasting type calls are possible with hundreds or thousands of participants. The High Performance Back-end setup includes special features for this.

The HPB also lowers the load from calls on the Nextcloud server, taking care of ‘signaling’ and optionally enables connecting a SIP bridge so users can dial in by phone into calls. The HPB runs on-premises, like Nextcloud itself, or through a hosted offering by our partners. Customers should be aware that it has significant dedicated bandwidth and processing needs. The HPB is available through Nextcloud GmbH.

Sign up for a free 30 day test of the hosted HPB offering in the Talk settings page.

Nextcloud 25 high performance backend

Enterprise-ready

The Nextcloud Talk High Performance Backend for large organizations offers the capacity, reliability and features enterprises need to conduct their business privately, securely and efficiently.

Dial-in anywhere

Let participants join through a phone line, wherever they are

No limitations

Improved connectivity behind firewalls and restrictive networks and more participants in a call

Get started quickly

Remote installation support from a certified Nextcloud engineer

The Nextcloud Talk High Performance Backend improves connection speed and reliability, decreases server load and allows more people in a call by improving network efficiency.