Your files live in Dropbox, or Google Drive, or a mix of both plus a NAS somebody bought in 2019. The bill goes up every year, nobody is quite sure who has access to what, and when a client asks where their data is physically stored, the honest answer is "somewhere in Ireland, probably". Nextcloud is the usual answer to that discomfort. Here is what it is, and when it is worth the trouble.
What Nextcloud actually is
Nextcloud is file storage and sharing that runs on a server you control, not on somebody else's platform. Staff get the same things they expect from Dropbox — a folder on the laptop that syncs, a web page to grab a file from, an app on the phone, links to send clients — except the server is yours. It also carries calendars, contacts and shared address books, so it can quietly replace two or three subscriptions at once.
It is open source, which in practice means two things: no per-user licence, and no vendor deciding next year that your plan now costs 40% more.
Where it earns its keep
The bill stops growing with headcount. Cloud storage is priced per user. Nextcloud is priced per server. Ten people or thirty, the machine costs the same — you only add space when you run out.
You can answer the data question. "Where is our data?" has a precise answer: on a named server in a UK data centre. For anyone working with client records, health data or legal files, that sentence is worth more than any feature.
Sharing has a boundary. Links can expire, be password protected, and be limited to view-only. When somebody leaves, you remove one account and their access is gone — including the folder that was synced to their personal laptop.
It stops the flash drive habit. Large files stop travelling by USB stick and by "I'll WeTransfer it", both of which leave no trace and no control.
The questions owners actually ask
Is it as reliable as Dropbox? The software is mature and used by governments and universities. The reliability question is really about who looks after the server — an unpatched Nextcloud on a forgotten machine is a liability, a monitored one with tested backups is not.
What if we want to leave? Your files are ordinary files on your own server. Copy them off and go. There is no export queue and no negotiation.
Will staff hate it? Most people notice only that the folder icon changed. The ones who will notice more are those who live in Google Docs — Nextcloud's built-in editing is decent but not identical, and it is worth testing with the people who write documents all day before you commit.
When you should not bother
If you are four people who already pay for Microsoft 365 and use SharePoint properly, Nextcloud adds a server to look after and saves you very little. If your work depends on real-time co-editing by several people in the same document, stay where you are. And if nobody in the business will own the decision to move — file locations, who gets what, what happens to the old system — the project will stall halfway and you will end up with two places for files instead of one, which is worse than either.
What it costs with us
A server sized for a small team is £30 or £45 a month, depending on how much space you need, in a UK data centre with the operating system, monitoring and daily backups included. Installing Nextcloud on it is a one-off £100 if you are on a support contract with us and £150 if you are not — that covers the setup, your domain with a certificate, the admin account and up to five users, and the application added to our backup routine with one restore tested in front of you.
After that you choose how much you want to hand over: £30 a month and we keep it updated, watched and working, or £75 a month and your staff bring their questions to us instead of to you. Migrating existing files from Dropbox or a NAS is quoted separately, after we have looked at how much there is and how it is organised.
If you would rather see the state of your current setup first, the free IT health check covers exactly that, and the written report is yours whether or not we work together. The Managed VPS page has the server sizes and prices in full.
Related
Remote access without a VPN server · Keeping folders identical without a cloud account