# Nextcloud 154 Hacker News commenters recommended Nextcloud and 126 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (21 owners). **Verdict:** A self-hosted replacement for Google Drive or Microsoft 365 that bundles file, calendar and contact sync, though many find it slow, janky and maintenance-heavy with frequent updates. ## Why people recommend it - File, calendar and contact sync (4 comments): "A Nextcloud can give you many things at once, file syncing, file shares, contact syncing, calendar syncing, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488006)) "Nextcloud provides all 3 in a package that pretty much just works, in my experience (despite being kinda slow)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803714)) "This is combined with Nextcloud allows you to sync Nextcloud calendar and contacts with your android phone." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094608)) - Escape Google and Microsoft (5 comments): "everybody I asked loves it. I also recently moved my personal data to Nextcloud from Google Drive and it's been extremely pleasant to use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46882497)) "I own my storage, I can do Google Drive stuff without selling my soul (aka data) to the devil" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804523)) "migrating my company away from MS 365 to Nextcloud on Hetzner, which is going slow but well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189924)) - Low maintenance once running (4 comments): "NextCloud uses its own updater* (which I don't like), and aside from some recent MariaDB snafu it's been very low maintenance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491653)) "It certainly is good enough for active use and, given a well-maintained collection of apps hardly takes any time to maintain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495695)) "I haven't touched my nextcloud installation in maybe 9 months and I've been running it for about 1.5 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49585212)) - Works well for daily use (5 comments): "everybody I asked loves it. I also recently moved my personal data to Nextcloud from Google Drive and it's been extremely pleasant to use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46882497)) "Things work just fine elsewhere (Dropbox, Google Drive, Nextcloud, and Seafile are all solutions I've had good experiences with)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773536)) "It works for me really well, I can grab my files through my vpn with any of my computers when I am not at home." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491762)) ## What people warn about - Slow, sluggish web interface (6 comments): "Nextcloud provides all 3 in a package that pretty much just works, in my experience (despite being kinda slow)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803714)) "most of the 'slowness' which Nextcloud is known for comes from the sometimes sluggish web interface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515473)) "You sadly can't just install nextcloud on your vanilla server and expect it to perform well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801544)) - Frequent updates break things (4 comments): "it expected far too much maintenance (4 month release cadence) to make sense for individual use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800395)) "intentionally broke (at least twice by memory) on some updates, wanting me to run some oci command on the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491998)) "My Nextcloud constantly needs updated. One day I started getting some odd random error about the database." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806905)) - Buggy, unpolished features (4 comments): "I would never recommend it as a general replacement to someone who can't tolerate "jank"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802976)) "The Calendar in particular is far less usable and (and much more buggy) than it was around the time it was forked from OwnCloud." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494331)) "The whole NextCloud suite seems to have this problem of too many offerings that don't get polished to completion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492573)) - Enterprise-only features and pricing (3 comments): "There are features that are only available to enterprise customers, or require proprietary plug-ins like Sendent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800577)) "The Nextcloud EE codebase might contain EE exclusive (longterm support) security patches, plus the Guard app, that is not publicly available" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45839913)) "whose "enterprise" pricing comes in at twice* the price MS365 does for fewer features, worse integration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800537)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Syncthing](https://hackerapproved.com/p/syncthing.md): 212 recommend - [OpenCloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opencloud.md): 18 recommend - [Seafile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/seafile.md): 18 recommend - [ownCloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/owncloud.md): 9 recommend - [Maestral](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maestral.md): 6 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Nextcloud", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nextcloud/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).