Nexcloud ideal for SOHO and small enterprises.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Nextcloud is used as a fully flagged PIM solution (calendar, addresses, messaging) with the addition of easy file sharing. With the available desktop clients for all major operating systems and mobile clients, everything can stay in sync. As this product is open source and can be hosted on-prem, the only costs involved are resources and administration. The basic applications that come with Nextcloud offer file viewing of PDFs; if you're looking for office functions like word processing, there are various plugins.
Pros
- Contact sharing via WebDAV.
- Calendar sharing via CalDAV.
- File sharing via web browser and Nextcloud client applications (desktop and mobile).
Cons
- Sync conflicts need to be resolved manually in some cases.
- It's not very straight forward to setup versioning for files.
- Creating a preview of files sets the server under heavy load.
Likelihood to Recommend
For a SOHO business, this solution is ideal. You don't need to administrative overhead of other products like GSuite, and it saves licensing costs. The maintenance effort is minimal as long as you use their default applications. Migrations to newer versions can be done with a few commands and run automatically. If you're planning on using Nextcloud in large deployments with many users, you'll start to see higher costs on your resources and maintenance. There will be a point at which Gsuite becomes easier to manage.
