openDesk
Hacker ApprovedRanked 8 of 18 office suites by recommenders
Open-source office suite seen as a sovereign alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Caveat: production use points to the paid Enterprise Edition.
Open-source office suite seen as a sovereign alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Caveat: production use points to the paid Enterprise Edition.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open-source sovereign alternative to Microsoft
“Moves like this hearten me as for certain lawyers the formats and standards they now will be expected to follow has just shifted, towards open source no less.”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk” “projects like Germany's OpenDesk or various municipalities moving toward Nextcloud”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “European digital ID wallets are a gift to Google and Apple” “I would love if we started selling sovereign cloud solutions, open desk etc”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?” - Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “OpenDesk – a flexible all-in-one office suite for the public sector”
Complete alternative to Google Workspace
“looks like they offer the whole stack of features and more”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk” “shaping up to be a great office- and collaboration suite”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source” “one of the most complete alternatives to goole workspace”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “European Alternatives” Actively developed and seen as solid
“At least they seem to be actively working on it”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk” “openDesk is solid, legit and serious.”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Production use needs Enterprise Edition
“it’s immediately made clear that you should use the Enterprise Edition for production use”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk” “not just to government organizations via a "contact sales" link”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?”
Other office suites people recommend
The four most recommended other office suites, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LibreOffice | 345 | 188 | 65% | 13 | 20 yrs11 owners | — |
| Microsoft Office | 256 | 407 | 39% | 12 | 12 yrs11 owners | — |
| Microsoft 365 | 151 | 340 | 31% | 12 | 2 yrs11 owners | — |
| Google Workspace | 107 | 214 | 33% | 12 | 10 yrs14 owners | — |
| openDeskThis page | 17 | 5 | 77% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
18 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“projects like Germany's OpenDesk or various municipalities moving toward Nextcloud”
“one of the most complete alternatives to goole workspace”
“shaping up to be a great office- and collaboration suite”
“not just to government organizations via a "contact sales" link”
“I would love if we started selling sovereign cloud solutions, open desk etc”
“I think this is a great development!”
“it’s immediately made clear that you should use the Enterprise Edition for production use”
“openDesk is solid, legit and serious.”
“There seems to be no spreadsheet”
“I was just thinking this would be good.”
“For the rest of the world this seems excessive.”
“A good candidate to be in https://european-alternatives.eu/”
“At least they seem to be actively working on it”
“Moves like this hearten me as for certain lawyers the formats and standards they now will be expected to follow has just shifted, towards open source no less.”
“The lack of anything at all on the roadmap page”
“looks like they offer the whole stack of features and more”
“it really really depends on if the components are chosen well”
“A public demo or some screenshots would go a long way, imo. Even finding the comunity editiion took me a minute”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.