First if all, it wants to do everything and does none well (or better than specialized apps)
Its internals are a shitshow - a question about getting the real IP of the calling client raised a 10 pages discussion where people said "it works" and other days "it does not". The "solution" required you to change a volatile setting within the docker container (and do it again when the container changes)
Finally the upgrade is insane. I once tried to upgrade my installation, was told that n+2 upgrades are not possible (fair enough) and ... the installer destroyed the database. What a piece of crap. Thanks god for backups.
I've run Nextcloud for almost 3 years now via docker on a vps , it hosts my contacts, calendars and files. There is a apache reverse proxy in front of it, and a postgresql-database in the back.
Not once had I any serious issues updating when pulling new updated images.
Occasionally it whines about missing indices, but that is easily fixed using the occ command line tool. The clients real IP is forwarded by the proxy.
What I want to say is just that Nextcloud works fine.
I can't speak to the other points you made because this has always stopped me from investing in it. What I need in my stack is a focused Google Docs alternative, but every time I've installed it (3-4 times at this point) I'm quickly overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff it includes and by how complicated actually setting up the Docs replacement was (at the time the recommendation was to install Collabora and link it up with Nextcloud, which I never could get working).
What I did see out of the box was a slow and bloated web portal, a bad calendar, a bad video conferencing app, a file backup solution, and a terrifying app store filled with add-ons that may or may not be maintained. Oh, and now it looks like they have an AI assistant?
I'm honestly relieved to see this here and know it's not just me. I ended up going with Seafile for file backups and have been very happy with it, though I'd still love to find a focused collaboration tool I can run.
Look, it's not without its quirks, but it's pretty reliable. Speed and responsiveness can be further upped by using an in-memory cache like Redis/Valkey.
Nextcloud can try to be everything it wants, but as users we can ignore that and stick to file-sharing/online/cloud storage.
If one is using it primarily for file storage/sharing, it works reasonably well. We have ~1TB of Nextcloud data on an NFS share (itself snapshotted ZFS), backed up to B2 regularly.
If something happens to a Nextcloud server (and it has), restoring the data is as simple as recreating the users and copying over the data directory for each user (provided you're not using it for calendaring and such). A quick OCC command to re-index user data and we're back.
We haven't had any issues running the docker image (orchestrated via HCP Nomad).
We have also helped a friend run Nextcloud for their small non-profit, as a snap on an EC2 instance in AWS. It keeps itself up-to-date and has been pretty-much problem free for years. EBS Snapshots cover backups there.
I run my own nextcloud server now for over 5 years. There are some frustrations like the photo app which is uselessly slow.
But for the files sync, contacts/calendar and some other apps it works well.
It _does_ offer a million different things and some of those are half baked but the core functionality (a dropbox-like file storage) is decent in my experience.
Updates have never been an issue. And honestly I am always a bit surprised by that. I don’t update to a new version right away but when I’m ready, I change the version in the docker compose, pull, re-up the container. It performs the database migration and brings up everything.
Never had an issue after using it for years. Not sure what your exact setup is, but it’s certainly not a nightmare to use.
Nextcloud's "internals are a shitshow" because Docker's networking stack prevents it from getting the IP of the calling client? That's an unreasonable take. Why single out Nextcloud here?
I found keeping it in docker makes it less of a nightmare, but it's definitely not something I'd trust with anything important.
There's like dozen scenarios where you end up with 0 byte files with no warning, error, etc. Sometimes it's an uploading issue, sometimes it's a syncing issue, etc. And they are still open, mutli-year, issues.
I ran into a version of it where existing uploads were replaced with zero byte versions, so I had to manually run a script to find them and I restore a pervious version. If it tried to do other things, like photos, document editing, collab, etc and did those poorly that would be fine. Failing at the most central task of just storing the data is not. It's still alpha quality, and if one intends to use it, it's critical you setup monitoring infrastructure to ensure file integrity (backups should go without saying).
This might be true but I finally deployed nextcloud for our co-op because I couldn't find any other solution to easily have a shared calendar with granular permissions to accounts I assign for write privileges, but also a dynamic ICS file download endpoint I can publicly expose. I tried a couple other caldav servers and none had this. So it does at least one thing better than specialized apps, which I typically prefer to use.
I handle several nextcloud instances, one of them updated from owncloud, I'm very happy, it does a lot of stuff well and when you need specialized software you can because it's just files. Updates have been painless.
Running it on k8s has similar issues. I only used it as sync for my obsidian notes with occasional (maybe once a month) access to those notes via web ui. I wasn’t happy with how it would reformat my notes on save.
Sync thing supports encrypted storage in VPS and is trivial to run in k8s and it’s been much better for my needs.
With AIO upgrade is a piece of cake. -- For us, Nextcloud is a godsend, some things could be improved, true, but they are improving; we are more than grateful for this comprehensive software. Much less hassle (and even less expensive) than Microsoft before.
Last week, I noticed that one of my contacts had an invalid date for their birthday. Try as I may, I cannot get Nextcloud to recognize 1/5/2000 as a valid date.
Wait until you see the "solution" for dealing with the client mangling timestamps [1]. After you've been burned by server updates, and then burned by client updates, with solutions that push the problems onto the system admin, you start to wonder if using it in the first place was a mistake.
IIRC, part of the reason they forked was because OwnCloud wasn't moving fast enough. My experience makes me think OwnCloud might have been right.
> First if all, it wants to do everything and does none well (or better than specialized apps)
Yep. And any extra apps beyond the default just make upgrades go sideways. I've given up on it. Using syncthing instead (just for file syncing) and haven't looked back. It's not my favorite either, but just because it's a pain to configure. Once configured, it's been rock solid.
The insane thing when I tried to update Nextcloud, was that it kept timing out the download because it was too slow, and then required me to delete the upgrade in progress file in order to try again...
Nextcloud ate my data on a single user installation with no fancy settings turned on, with no upgrades attempted.
The sync client on desktop said it was fully synced. Only 200GB of 800GB was on the machine.
It’s some of the worst software I have ever used. It’s the pentagon house with the inverted roof built with the two-clawed hammer that eevee described.
I started using Nextcloud first to have an alternative to big-tech in case Google locks me out of my account, and then it became my daily driver. It's fast, private, and has mature clients for all major desktop and mobile platforms. Together with OnlyOffice, it's a good-enough substitute for Google Docs Editors (the office suite) for non-collaborative editing.
I love self-hosting but file storage is one thing that I don't want to risk. I've been paying for Hetzner Storage Share [0] happily to save myself the headache.
If you want a different hosting provider, Nextcloud now has Simple Signup program[1] which helps new users to sign up for a free plan with a provider near them, offering ≥ 2GB of storage. You can also browse the entire list if you want to pick one manually.[2]
A common misconception IMO is that running and owning your own infrastructure is somehow more secure. To that I lol, and I’m confident that the thousands of AWS/GCP/Azure/iCloud security engineers are all doing a more thorough job than you can. At the very very least they receive embargoed bugs which they often mitigate before the general public.
I've been using Nextcloud for some years now. Overall it's an ok replacement for Google Cloud. But for some time now their focus has been on developing features for business collaboration as opposed to personal & family ones. For example, their photo library is quite limited. There's Memories app for Nextcluod, but it isn't much better. I'm in the process of migrating to Immich. Nextcluod notes app on Android has been broken for some time.
As a self hosting afficionado, I feel like the perfect Google photo replacement doesn't exist yet.
I have a synology nas and I use the synology photos app for auto uploading without loss of quality to my nas. Don't forget any picture or videos, deduplicate, figure out what you can safely delete from my phone,... All of that works great and is reliable.
The synology photos app to watch your photos though, isn't very good. Neither on mobile nor the desktop nor android TV. It's bare minimum and even that has failures.
Next cloud,... It gives a weird "I don't trust it" vibe. I want my stuff unedited unaltered, unmoved from their folder and keep your metadata elsewhere, and it just give me a wrong vibe for that. This is 100% feeling and not facts.
Immich is great but high maintenance, any update is a risk that you have way more work that planned. Their upload app need works but I use the synology one. I don't feel safe having that handle the main copies of my picture, and the dev are being super clear that I shouldn't.
Photoprism has been my go to. You need to pay for any advanced features, and unless you're solo you need them for permissions only. I love it but I feel like it's still not quite as good as I would like.
Is there any major, reliable app for that I missed?
> their focus has been on developing features for business collaboration as opposed to personal & family ones
For people like me, who have to contend with GDPR and NIS 2 requirements on an organizational level in Germany this actually is a god-send. MS and Google don't play nice with the local law, e.g. refusing order processing agreements, although MS has recently started to move on this topic.
We replaced MS stuff (all of Sharepoint, most of PIM) with Nextcloud and MS ADS via SAML without too much of a hassle. The sync client has its nuisances (e.g. can't name Nextcloud instances) and it's getting worse for the last few versions! But it does its job, i.e. syncing, and you can always use the cloud itself.
I've been looking into NextCloud to recommend to a government agency. The world desperately need competition or at least something compatible with the m365 stack, because it's eating the world and taking a lot of choice away and killing a lot of innovation outside the Microsoft funnel, since Microsoft is not interested in a lot of tech (for example, network schemas, useful for "tell us once" type applications, since they'd rather you just use their tech for everything, and the messier it is behind the scenes, the better for them).
Anyway, I have mixed feelings. I admire the community and the support it has by many governments, its staunch Open Source basis so it's useful for an individual or a large organization. But it is building on a lot of crufty PHP, their collection of apps is very uneven and it's hard to know what works well without a lot of research, and it's going in a few directions to upgrade. AppApi in particular is on one hand very innovative, on the other going in some odd directions. I know it is successfully used by very large organizations, but without spending a lot of time with it, it's hard to get a sense of the commitment and considerations required.
Lets not forget iPhone vendor lock in that specifically slows down or entirely closes background connections for all other vendors except Apple. So syncing files with Nextcloud or any other app except Apple cloud is an exercise in undocumented futility.
You can put it as a front application and wait (if corporate hasn’t forced a screen turning off timeout)
Not sure how the apple rant is related to the post but;
I use syncthing (via mobius sync) on my iphone and am quite happy with it. It seems to be OK with enough background syncs as it is, but to top it off i added a shortcut that keeps the app in the foreground while the phone is charging and im always up to date, pretty much instantly. Used to keep a couple hundred gb in sync that way (books, papers, org files, passwords, etc).
Snaps are not popular in hacker news, but if you want basic functionality, try nextcloud snap. It is good, and takes care of itself.
I like nextcloud, and always have an instance for file sharing with people. For basic features, it works good.
That said, I think it would have been better if they could focus on core features, remove code complexity, make it faster, remove bugs around the edges, make sure it just works and upgrades reliably. It could not possibly do such diverse range of applications, and now AI.
I love my nextcloud server. I set up an instant upload for my phones camera photos to replace Google photos. Now I get all my photos automatically synced to my server at home.
Sort of. At some point, you need a platform that orchestrates all those "do one thing well" outputs. I'm using NextCloud for that -- too early to totally be satisfied, but nothing crazy going on yet! Waiting to see a few upgrades and backups to see how things go.
If you're using Mailinabox for your mail server, it comes with a copy of NextCloud by navigating to "/cloud" -- you can sign in with your mailinabox credentials! I'm using it for everything from my keepass database to gnucash syncing, calendar and contacts too!
The idea of using a private cloud sounded wonderful, ran an instance of Next Cloud using encrypted storage, it didn't take long when my files disappeared due to a bug on the encryption and los my files for ever.
Never went back to it
No comment on anything else, but the tone of the page is so schoolyard. For a company that targets enterprise and government clients, petty jabs at the weather app look unprofessional.
I use Nextcloud, but I'm disappointed in their transition from a file host/sync solution to a "do everything" solution. Their sync client has languished and their server-side sync software has severe performance issues; the core of what made Nextcloud valuable to me has seemingly remained untouched for half a decade as they chase everything else.
Honestly I do not favor this paradigm, no matter if NextCloud, O360, SandStorm and alike: the point is that we should teach the desktop paradigm, syncing data around, not using desktops as monsters, hyper-expensive thin clients or more properly dumb terminals of a remote "mainframe".
It's easy today because current IT evolution is totally skewed, derailed for commercial reasons, but that's untenable. Who think it's normal being even unable to access already made documents only because "the remote service or the network is down"?
Just want to say it's times like these I really appreciate the HN community.
The NextCloud site makes it all look great and probably easier than some parts of my current DIY strategy, but reading here I think I'll stick to said strategy.
I like very much Next loud (the idea, the project, some part of the design like storing files flat easily backup able) but my major issue is with the file synchronisation with the Android.
It totally does not work. If you try to send or synchronize just a few files it is mostly ok. But when trying to upload more than a few dozen files, things starts to not work well, like transfer being stuck, or the transfer completing ok but then only a portion of files were transferred.
That instability is the main reason preventing me to use it daily as in the end I will just use it on the computer where the main value would be on mobile.
[+] [-] BrandoElFollito|1 year ago|reply
First if all, it wants to do everything and does none well (or better than specialized apps)
Its internals are a shitshow - a question about getting the real IP of the calling client raised a 10 pages discussion where people said "it works" and other days "it does not". The "solution" required you to change a volatile setting within the docker container (and do it again when the container changes)
Finally the upgrade is insane. I once tried to upgrade my installation, was told that n+2 upgrades are not possible (fair enough) and ... the installer destroyed the database. What a piece of crap. Thanks god for backups.
[+] [-] TheChaplain|1 year ago|reply
Not once had I any serious issues updating when pulling new updated images.
Occasionally it whines about missing indices, but that is easily fixed using the occ command line tool. The clients real IP is forwarded by the proxy.
What I want to say is just that Nextcloud works fine.
[+] [-] lolinder|1 year ago|reply
I can't speak to the other points you made because this has always stopped me from investing in it. What I need in my stack is a focused Google Docs alternative, but every time I've installed it (3-4 times at this point) I'm quickly overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff it includes and by how complicated actually setting up the Docs replacement was (at the time the recommendation was to install Collabora and link it up with Nextcloud, which I never could get working).
What I did see out of the box was a slow and bloated web portal, a bad calendar, a bad video conferencing app, a file backup solution, and a terrifying app store filled with add-ons that may or may not be maintained. Oh, and now it looks like they have an AI assistant?
I'm honestly relieved to see this here and know it's not just me. I ended up going with Seafile for file backups and have been very happy with it, though I'd still love to find a focused collaboration tool I can run.
[+] [-] davidee|1 year ago|reply
Look, it's not without its quirks, but it's pretty reliable. Speed and responsiveness can be further upped by using an in-memory cache like Redis/Valkey.
Nextcloud can try to be everything it wants, but as users we can ignore that and stick to file-sharing/online/cloud storage.
If one is using it primarily for file storage/sharing, it works reasonably well. We have ~1TB of Nextcloud data on an NFS share (itself snapshotted ZFS), backed up to B2 regularly.
If something happens to a Nextcloud server (and it has), restoring the data is as simple as recreating the users and copying over the data directory for each user (provided you're not using it for calendaring and such). A quick OCC command to re-index user data and we're back.
We haven't had any issues running the docker image (orchestrated via HCP Nomad).
We have also helped a friend run Nextcloud for their small non-profit, as a snap on an EC2 instance in AWS. It keeps itself up-to-date and has been pretty-much problem free for years. EBS Snapshots cover backups there.
[+] [-] ruph123|1 year ago|reply
Updates have never been an issue. And honestly I am always a bit surprised by that. I don’t update to a new version right away but when I’m ready, I change the version in the docker compose, pull, re-up the container. It performs the database migration and brings up everything. Never had an issue after using it for years. Not sure what your exact setup is, but it’s certainly not a nightmare to use.
[+] [-] soraminazuki|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DistractionRect|1 year ago|reply
There's like dozen scenarios where you end up with 0 byte files with no warning, error, etc. Sometimes it's an uploading issue, sometimes it's a syncing issue, etc. And they are still open, mutli-year, issues.
I ran into a version of it where existing uploads were replaced with zero byte versions, so I had to manually run a script to find them and I restore a pervious version. If it tried to do other things, like photos, document editing, collab, etc and did those poorly that would be fine. Failing at the most central task of just storing the data is not. It's still alpha quality, and if one intends to use it, it's critical you setup monitoring infrastructure to ensure file integrity (backups should go without saying).
[+] [-] komali2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jraph|1 year ago|reply
I handle several nextcloud instances, one of them updated from owncloud, I'm very happy, it does a lot of stuff well and when you need specialized software you can because it's just files. Updates have been painless.
[+] [-] baby_souffle|1 year ago|reply
Running it on k8s has similar issues. I only used it as sync for my obsidian notes with occasional (maybe once a month) access to those notes via web ui. I wasn’t happy with how it would reformat my notes on save.
Sync thing supports encrypted storage in VPS and is trivial to run in k8s and it’s been much better for my needs.
[+] [-] chappi42|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] thepill|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] n3storm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymousiam|1 year ago|reply
Last week, I noticed that one of my contacts had an invalid date for their birthday. Try as I may, I cannot get Nextcloud to recognize 1/5/2000 as a valid date.
(And no, it's not a localization problem.)
[+] [-] donmcronald|1 year ago|reply
Wait until you see the "solution" for dealing with the client mangling timestamps [1]. After you've been burned by server updates, and then burned by client updates, with solutions that push the problems onto the system admin, you start to wonder if using it in the first place was a mistake.
IIRC, part of the reason they forked was because OwnCloud wasn't moving fast enough. My experience makes me think OwnCloud might have been right.
1. https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/wiki/How-to-fix-the-err...
[+] [-] kyrofa|1 year ago|reply
Yep. And any extra apps beyond the default just make upgrades go sideways. I've given up on it. Using syncthing instead (just for file syncing) and haven't looked back. It's not my favorite either, but just because it's a pain to configure. Once configured, it's been rock solid.
[+] [-] Namidairo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|1 year ago|reply
The sync client on desktop said it was fully synced. Only 200GB of 800GB was on the machine.
It’s some of the worst software I have ever used. It’s the pentagon house with the inverted roof built with the two-clawed hammer that eevee described.
[+] [-] boramalper|1 year ago|reply
I love self-hosting but file storage is one thing that I don't want to risk. I've been paying for Hetzner Storage Share [0] happily to save myself the headache.
If you want a different hosting provider, Nextcloud now has Simple Signup program[1] which helps new users to sign up for a free plan with a provider near them, offering ≥ 2GB of storage. You can also browse the entire list if you want to pick one manually.[2]
[0] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
[1] https://nextcloud.com/sign-up/
[2] https://nextcloud.com/providers/#:~:text=Providers%20for%20h...
[+] [-] obnauticus|1 year ago|reply
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=nextcloud
A common misconception IMO is that running and owning your own infrastructure is somehow more secure. To that I lol, and I’m confident that the thousands of AWS/GCP/Azure/iCloud security engineers are all doing a more thorough job than you can. At the very very least they receive embargoed bugs which they often mitigate before the general public.
[+] [-] zerof1l|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nolok|1 year ago|reply
I have a synology nas and I use the synology photos app for auto uploading without loss of quality to my nas. Don't forget any picture or videos, deduplicate, figure out what you can safely delete from my phone,... All of that works great and is reliable.
The synology photos app to watch your photos though, isn't very good. Neither on mobile nor the desktop nor android TV. It's bare minimum and even that has failures.
Next cloud,... It gives a weird "I don't trust it" vibe. I want my stuff unedited unaltered, unmoved from their folder and keep your metadata elsewhere, and it just give me a wrong vibe for that. This is 100% feeling and not facts.
Immich is great but high maintenance, any update is a risk that you have way more work that planned. Their upload app need works but I use the synology one. I don't feel safe having that handle the main copies of my picture, and the dev are being super clear that I shouldn't.
Photoprism has been my go to. You need to pay for any advanced features, and unless you're solo you need them for permissions only. I love it but I feel like it's still not quite as good as I would like.
Is there any major, reliable app for that I missed?
[+] [-] Propelloni|1 year ago|reply
For people like me, who have to contend with GDPR and NIS 2 requirements on an organizational level in Germany this actually is a god-send. MS and Google don't play nice with the local law, e.g. refusing order processing agreements, although MS has recently started to move on this topic.
We replaced MS stuff (all of Sharepoint, most of PIM) with Nextcloud and MS ADS via SAML without too much of a hassle. The sync client has its nuisances (e.g. can't name Nextcloud instances) and it's getting worse for the last few versions! But it does its job, i.e. syncing, and you can always use the cloud itself.
[+] [-] noname120|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sureglymop|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] blendergeek|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] clort|1 year ago|reply
(I've been using it for 3 years never noticed any broke...)
[+] [-] vid|1 year ago|reply
Anyway, I have mixed feelings. I admire the community and the support it has by many governments, its staunch Open Source basis so it's useful for an individual or a large organization. But it is building on a lot of crufty PHP, their collection of apps is very uneven and it's hard to know what works well without a lot of research, and it's going in a few directions to upgrade. AppApi in particular is on one hand very innovative, on the other going in some odd directions. I know it is successfully used by very large organizations, but without spending a lot of time with it, it's hard to get a sense of the commitment and considerations required.
[+] [-] rc_mob|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] antman|1 year ago|reply
You can put it as a front application and wait (if corporate hasn’t forced a screen turning off timeout)
[+] [-] shwouchk|1 year ago|reply
Not affiliated with the product.
[+] [-] aborsy|1 year ago|reply
I like nextcloud, and always have an instance for file sharing with people. For basic features, it works good.
That said, I think it would have been better if they could focus on core features, remove code complexity, make it faster, remove bugs around the edges, make sure it just works and upgrades reliably. It could not possibly do such diverse range of applications, and now AI.
[+] [-] ang_cire|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameyeff|1 year ago|reply
If we can advance portable specs so different open source projects can interop... that would be better time spent.
[+] [-] tomrod|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ajdude|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gchaincl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aae42|1 year ago|reply
it certainly seems much more stable so far. The lack of features might be a feature itself.
[+] [-] jmakov|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gostsamo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bloqs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] phntxx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] josephcsible|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mort96|1 year ago|reply
I hope some people find it valuable though.
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
It's easy today because current IT evolution is totally skewed, derailed for commercial reasons, but that's untenable. Who think it's normal being even unable to access already made documents only because "the remote service or the network is down"?
[+] [-] grahamj|1 year ago|reply
The NextCloud site makes it all look great and probably easier than some parts of my current DIY strategy, but reading here I think I'll stick to said strategy.
[+] [-] greatgib|1 year ago|reply
It totally does not work. If you try to send or synchronize just a few files it is mostly ok. But when trying to upload more than a few dozen files, things starts to not work well, like transfer being stuck, or the transfer completing ok but then only a portion of files were transferred.
That instability is the main reason preventing me to use it daily as in the end I will just use it on the computer where the main value would be on mobile.
[+] [-] PikachuEXE|1 year ago|reply
Not using NextCloud for anything else yet though
[+] [-] MrDisposable|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rewgs|1 year ago|reply
I want to love it, but it's just so not there yet -- I worry that its lack of focus will prevent it from ever getting there.