Battle of the Clouds
Interested in finding the private cloud package that will work for you?
So are we! 🙂
In the open source private cloud space, there exist several options, such as ownCloud, Nextcloud, Seafile, Syncthing and Pydio as well as smaller players such as SparkleShare.
To see what’s happening in this market, let’s take a brief look at this Google Trends graph of interest in the top four packages over the past 5 years:
Shows pretty clearly that ownCloud and Nextcloud dwarf the competition, and it also seems pretty clear that since its inception, interest in Nextcloud has been growing fast and today has actually more Google searches than ownCloud.
Which project is actually bigger however is not clear. On a 2018 press release Nextcloud notes that they had “over 100K downloads of the Collabora Nextcloud app” in 2017 and in another 2018 press release claim that they have over 35 employees and “over 100 customers and partners.” ownCloud, on the other hand, in a 2018 blog post claim that they have almost 500 customers and that they hired 17 new employees in 2017. Both appear to be growing fast.
Not a surprise then that people are asking every day for details about Nextcloud vs ownCloud. What’s the difference?
This is indeed an excellent question and below we’re going to detail exactly what differences exist. Yes, we are entering now the Battle of the Clouds! 🙂
We will examine four areas:
- History – when and how did these two projects get started
- Who – what people are funding and supporting the software
- License – what is the license for each
- Product – what differences exist in the actual product
The last section Product is certainly the largest section and may be of most interest to many, so if you want, just click on the word Product to jump straight there.
A Brief History
ownCloud was launched in January 2010 by Frank Karlitschek and the first beta release came out in March 2010. In 2012 ownCloud Inc. was formed to serve the needs of the community of users of ownCloud. After the Nextcloud fork, ownCloud Inc. was shut down and today ownCloud is still managed by ownCloud GmbH.
Nextcloud was launched in April 2016 when Karlitschek forked ownCloud to create Nextcloud. Most of the core contributors of ownCloud left with Karlitschek to join forces in the new Nextcloud project, managed by the new company formed at the same time, Nextcloud GmbH. Within 6 months Nextcloud GmbH was profitable and remains today profitable and still manages the Nextcloud project.
Regarding why Karlitschek left ownCloud, he himself expresses most clearly in his blog post big changes: I am leaving ownCloud, Inc. today. How this affected the community and for other responses to the fork you can read up in various other places like ownCloud’s blog, The New Stack, TechRepublic, CIO, ITWire and others.
Who
The ownCloud project is split into two components, the open source Standard Edition and the Enterprise Edition, which is not open source, but the code can be downloaded without obfuscation. The Standard Edition is represented by owncloud.org and managed by ownCloud GmbH and the list of contributors is online.
The Enterprise Edition is represented by owncloud.com, has more features, and is also managed by ownCloud GmBH. They also have an exclusive partnership for North American clients with a company called XTIVIA and there is an XTIVIA page on the ownCloud site describing this relationship. ownCloud also has an official Meet the Team page.
Nextcloud has one open source edition and is represented online by nextcloud.com and managed by Nextcloud GmbH and the list of contributors is online and boasts that over 1000 people have contributed to Nextcloud.
License
ownCloud Standard Edition is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 and the core code is covered by the ownCloud Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
ownCloud Enterprise Edition is not open source and is licensed under the ownCloud Commercial License.
Nextcloud is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3.
The Product
The latest release of ownCloud Standard Edition released May 2017 is version 10 or ownCloud X, as they call it. The rest of our review is only regarding the Standard Edition, which is open source. The ownCloud Enterprise Edition does have more features not listed below.
Nextcloud’s latest release, from February 2018, is version 13.
Below we have these sub-sections in this section:
- Screenshots
- Pricing
- Technology
- Security
- Features
- Community and Support
Here’s the first one:
Screenshots
Preview the two login screens head to head — they’re quite similar:
Here we show you the top left corner of the initial screen, known as the “Files” page. This is essentially the Home page of a private cloud:
Click on the share icon for a file and you see on the right side the share menu for that file:
On our installation with several apps installed, Nextcloud shows each as a small icon, accessible directly from the main menu top bar. If you install a lot of apps in Nextcloud, however, you also must use a dropdown menu feature to see the rest:
In ownCloud you must first click on the dropdown menu, but then the app icons are larger and have text also:
Here is the initial apps page of Nextcloud:
If you select a category on the left, however, you do get a nicer view of available apps:
Here is the initial Marketplace page of ownCloud:
Pricing
Pricing for Nextcloud and ownCloud are free. That means they cost precisely zero dollars and zero cents to use them for as unlimited time, with unlimited data and unlimited users. There is no fee whatsover to download and use either package — they are both Open Source and completely free.
The marketing experts at FileCloud will try to convince you that each of these packages costs thousands of dollars per year, more in fact than their own commercial package. They make a convincing case that their product is less expensive. What they fail to mention, however, is that the fees they mention for Nextcloud and ownCloud are not software fees, they are optional support subscriptions.
There is a Nextcloud Pricing page as well as an ownCloud Pricing page, but again, these are only for a support subscription — you are not required to purchase that.
The base price for both is just ZERO. You of course need hosting and you can see our own Nextcloud hosting page for information about our hosting services, or you can host it yourself at home.
Technology
Both packages are built in PHP and support SQLite or MySQL/MariaDB. The installation procedure is virtually the same for both. For details, see our own How to Install Nextcloud page.
Regarding the code base, both are public of course and so you can see exactly what progress is being made. If we compare the GitHub Nextcloud “commit activity” graph and the ownCloud “commit activity” graph, you can see that Nextcloud has around twice as many commits as ownCloud does. A representative from ownCloud commented to us offline that their approach is to make fewer, but larger commits, but if we examine the Nextcloud “code frequency” graph vs the ownCloud “code frequency” graph it’s quite clear that since the split in 2016, the Nextcloud team has made far more development with the codebase than ownCloud.
They also have several more releases over the past year than ownCloud. Given that both packages started with the exact same code base when Nextcloud forked, this gives one an idea of where the action is.
Security
The Nextcloud team has invested a lot in improving security for their product, such as better password handling, brute force protection, rate limiting, integration with various enterprise authentication methods, CSP and more.
Nextcloud features a public Security Scan Tool which scans both Nextcloud and ownCloud instances and ownCloud also has a public Security Scan Tool as well.
Nextcloud, however, features an up to $5,000 Bug Bounty Program at HackerOne, a vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform. You can see more on the Nextcloud page there.
The Nextcloud page there boasts an initial response time of under an hour and a response percentage of 100% whereas ownCloud’s page doesn’t mention the initial response time and shows a response percentage of only 82%.
ownCloud also has a page there, but as of Dec 19, 2018, it is not active and says “ownCloud is taking a break and is not accepting new submissions”. You can see for yourself the ownCloud page there.
Features
| Feature | Nextcloud | ownCloud |
|---|---|---|
| Files | ||
| File Storage | YesUpload, synch, comments, tags, multiple versions, move files via web interface | YesUpload, synch, comments, tags, multiple versions, move files via web interface |
| File Sharing | YesShare via user, email, link, social media sites, password protection and expiration date. Can allow user without an account (just email) to edit a document. | YesShare via user, or link, social media sites, password protection and expiration date |
| Full Text Search | YesThe Nextant app integrates Apache Solr | YesIntegration with ElasticSearch available via a fee-based add-on |
| Folder Sharing | YesShare via user, email, link, social media sites, password protection and expiration date. Can allow user to view and upload. | YesShare via user, or ink, social media sites, password protection and expiration date. Can allow user to view and upload. |
| LibreOffice Online Integration | Yes | Yes |
| PDF Viewer | YesBuilt in | YesPDF Viewer app available |
| Photo Galleries | Yes | Yes |
| Document Editing for Email Users with no Login | Yes | No |
| Activity Tracking for Files | YesBuilt in | YesActivity app available |
| Large File Support | Yes | Yes |
| Storage Limitation per User | Yes | Yes |
| File Access Control | Yes | Enterprise Edition only |
| File Locking | YesVia the W2G2 app | No |
| Federation | YesSharing files across Nextcloud servers is supported | YesSharing files across ownCloud servers is supported |
| Clients | ||
| Web Client | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop Clients | Windows, Mac, Linux | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Mobile Clients | YesGoogle Play Android client (rated 4 and is free), Apple App store client (rated 4.7 and is free), F-Droid repository Android client and the MS Windows Store has an app still in testing | YesWindows Mobile client, Google Play Android client (rated 4 and costs $4.00), Apple App store client (rated 2.9 and costs $0.99), and Blackberry World has a client |
| Apps | ||
| App Store / Marketplace | Yes120 apps listed in the Nextcloud app store | Yes62 apps listed in the ownCloud marketplace |
| Audio/Video Chat | YesIncludes push notifications | NoWe couldn’t find any app for chats for ownCloud 10 |
| Audio/Video Player | YesCouldn’t find any way to close the player however, aside from refreshing my web page | Yes |
| Bookmarks App | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar App | Yes | Yes |
| Contacts App | Yes | Yes |
| YesSimple Nextcloud Mail app plus a RainLoop integration app | YesRainLoop integration app | |
| Notes | Yes | Yes |
| Weather | Yes | No |
| Security | ||
| Two Factor Authentication | YesMultiple methods available, plus enforcement | YesTOTL available |
| Brute Force Protection | YesFor both core and apps | YesAvailable via the ownCloud Security app |
| Rate Limiting | Yes | No |
| Other Features | ||
| User Groups | YesCircles app allows your users to create their own groups of users/colleagues/friends | YesCustom groups app let users create and manage custom groups for sharing |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| External Storage Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Scability / Enterprise Support | YesEnterprise level service is supported and the new Global Scale architecture is under development to expand this support further | YesownCloud Enterprise Edition has Enterprise support, but is not open source nor free |
| Resource Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Third Party Authentication | Yes | Yes |
| Theme Customization | Yes | Yes |
| Role Based Administration | Yes | Yes |
| Delta Sync | No | MediumExperimental |
| Virtual Files | No | MediumExperimental |
| Workflow | Yes | Yes |
| Accessibility | YesWCAG 2.0 AA and AAA standard compliance Keyboard/screen reader support Dyslexia-friendly font |
No |
| Translations | 33 languages available | 103 languages available |
Community and Support
ownCloud has a Support page with links to documentation, forums, IRC channel and other venues such as a Google Plus community, plus a mailing list. They then also have premium support for their Enterprise clients.
Nextcloud’s Support page has the same links for their documentation, forums, IRC channel and other venues such as a Google Plus community. They also provide premium support for clients who use their Enterprise support services.
Comparing the public forums shows that the most popular post on Nextcloud has over 96,000 views (entitled Migrating from ownCloud to Nextcloud) and the most popular on ownCloud’s has 38K views (entitled File is locked – how to unlock).
If you prefer video, for Nextcloud there is a Nextcloud GmbH YouTube channel with over 60 videos, the most popular of which has 25,000 views.
For ownCloud there is the ownClouders channel, which, based on the logo used, appears to be focused on the Standard Edition and has over 250 videos and the most popular there has 170,000 views, and then there is the ownCloud channel apparently representing the Enterprise Version (here you see the Enterprise logo) with over 80 videos and the most popular video there has almost 3,000 views.
A quick Google search for “Nextcloud” brings up over 841,000 results and a search for “ownCloud” brings up almost 2 million results.
Conclusion
Both packages have a solid base and a growing set of addon apps, both have support available. Nextcloud, however, has a lot more action, “buzz” and growth. ownCloud does not appear to be dead at all, but the future of open source clouds clearly looks to be with Nextcloud.
Post Conclusion
If you’re looking for hosting for Nextcloud or for ownCloud, whether in the USA or Europe, we recommend CiviHosting. Let us install and secure your cloud for you:
About the Author
Pingbacks:
https://www.c-rieger.de/nextcloud-vs-owncloud-the-whole-story/
Wow, great side-by-side review! Nextcloud it is then. Thank you!
I hope your install goes better than mine
My pleasure. Thank you for the feedback. 🙂
This list says owncloud has theme customization, but it doesn’t.. I wonder what else is wrong on this list.
ownCloud has Theming support since years:
https://doc.owncloud.com/server/developer_manual/core/theming.html
Thx! Feature table really convinced me now.
Happy to help. Thank you also for the feedback. 🙂
Well, nice try but as a happy user of OwnCloud 9.1 with recently very successfully integrated Onlyoffice I do not intend to change cloud engine even if a thousand noobs reaches 6 million commits in github and Nextcloud has even more than “far more features”. Long live Owncloud! You do not change things that work well or you go to an error hell. 😉 ps. Not an ownCloud employee, just an open source user. 😉
You damn right, if its already works for you.. dont bothers.. our time is precious.. LOL
I’ve been tempted to leave ownCloud on occasion, usually due to the havoc that ensues after upgrading (it almost NEVER seems to go smoothly), but sometimes “the hell you know” is the best one. Generally, it just hums along working fine if I don’t mess with it.
Yeah, upgrading is a major weakness of ownCloud, and one of the first issues we addressed when we started Nextcloud (together with the security aspect). We made huge strides – most users will tell you our major feature upgrades are now more reliable than minor bugfix updates used to be! Of course, we also don’t make major changes like rewriting LDAP in our minor releases, which keeps these updates even more safe and reliable.
While Nextcloud is busy pushing their version numbers and the quantity of commits ownCloud does some real work and has significantly improved the upgrade process. And all this after the fork when the broken part of the dev team left so we could finally focus on being productive again. The feedback we get proves us right (see below).
but updates still don’t work.
Client error response [url] http://localhost/index.php/occ/config:list [status code] 404 [reason phrase] Not Found
10.0.10
The updating of ownCloud is very painful. Now we have lost quota setting… Our admin tells that OC is one of big troublemakers during upgrade. I confirm his words. I have my own installation at home (starting from V8). Every main version upgrade needs manual editing of file owners, access permissions, config files etc. The most safe way I found is backup all the data, create new fresh installation and put the users and data back. But it is possible at home and not easy for enterprise installation…
Yes, I had a problem with service mode in upgrade to OwnCloud X version. I had to manualy fix permisions, remve addons and stuff like that to get it working. Half of a night of fight and struggle.
Owncloud it is then
I’ll say this: I loved Owncloud, had a personal instance at home and was even recommending setting up an Enterprise instance at work, right up until it committed a cardinal sin with data handling. I went on a trip across country to my grandmother’s funeral. I was using Owncloud from my laptop to retrieve family pictures from the server at home when suddenly the pictures I was trying to save started disappearing. Every time I would visit a folder, I would exit and enter and the folder contents would disappear. After a few times of trying I gave up, shut off the laptop and left it alone until I could check out the system at home.
Once I got home, on the server I had a bunch of folders deleted and family photos gone. I was able to restore them from backups, but in the end I had to reinstall Owncloud to get it to stop randomly deleting files when I visited a folder.
I found out later that it was some kind of bug in the sync system where it would get confused and think that because it hadn’t downloaded the file locally it was ok to delete it from the remote. I found lots of bug reports and user complaints from older versions, and the devs claiming it had been fixed in a much earlier version than I had, yet there it stood. Worse still, in the forums users who had asked about the bug were basically told it’s probably fixed, but it’s rare so it’s just not a priority.
Sorry, but if a bug exists that could randomly start deleting my files from cloud storage, that should be a showstopper. I don’t care how rare it is. But that’s how much Owncloud cares about user data, and that’s why I shut down my Owncloud server.
And before anybody says it, yes, I know that’s why we do backups. That’s why I was able to restore the data. However, backups are supposed to be for an emergency, not business as usual when somebody accessed data remotely on a spotty connection. Data integrity should be top priority for any cloud infrastructure, self hosted or not, and any project willing to compromise that integrity deserves to be abandoned.
Had the same issue. Luckly I had windows 10 file history backup on. I was using one account on two computer to sync files between. Owncloud got lost completely and deleted all my photos.
It happend in 2020. Since then i am very caucious when changing big amount of data and check owncloud folder size on both pc’s from time to time. I don’t trust owncloud very much.
Yeah, i’m sure that’s exactly what Elon Musk thought after he failed his 1st time & then invented TESLA…. Wonderful logic there bud! Ahahahahahahahahaha
well, I am now in the process of updating owncloud and this is a real pain the backside, as it does not support this or that after update. Having server in production environment based on CentOS/RedHat, you need to install additional development repos to get unsupported by the distro PHP engine and then risk being hacked only because owncloud does not support past versions of PHP.
I think I’ll get into the nextcloud as I am using ownloud for around 2 years now and am ever since annoyed with update process. As Frank moved on, I can expect better update process, maybe even a script, from nextcloud rather than owncloud.
Mhhh, shouldn’t you expect a better update process by a fresh minded / new owncloud team rather then the broken update process mostly designed by the team now moved to nextcloud?
Sorry, completely forgot to mention. My update/upgrade experience with ownCloud drastically improved with all versions released after the Fork. You now can even skip major releases and e.g. jump directly from 8.2.11 to 10.0.4 without the need to go step by step like before. This is really a huge improvement.
As I also replied higher up, improving the upgrade process has been one of our very first priorities and I’m happy to report that we have made huge strides there 😉
Nextcloud 13 is certainly a testament to that, within a week more than 10.000 servers were already upgraded without any problems. If you recall how the 10.0 release of our ownCloud friends went (with fully broken LDAP, calendar and contacts just some of the issues), you probably understand very well what a big step forward that is.
Of course, our minor bugfix updates are also very reliable – we strictly backport fixes, not major rewrites, so you can expect them to be limited in scope and thus go smooth. Updates are very important to keep a system secure, so this matters for security, too!
Out of curiosity i had a short look at some of the Nextcloud announcement topics and found quite a lot user reporting upgrading issues. Based on this the reply above doesn’t look that honest to me. :-/
To me it looks like both, ownCloud and Nextcloud have their issues on the first version of a major release. Hope both gets such issues sorted out in the future.
Yeah, that is what they call “a false equivalency”. Of course, users will bump into issues with their setup, even if Nextcloud was absolutely perfect, which it is not. Doesn’t mean it isn’t much BETTER. Backporting features to a minor release is risky, especially with a team where most have less than a year experience in the code base. But a major release requires a lot of resources, so I guess it is a middle way.
In any case, I must say it is a little annoying to always have to reply to anonymous users making up stuff, attacking Nextcloud or defending ownCloud on twitter, forums and other platforms. Why do ownCloud employees never want to put their name on what they say?
Not being able to respond to Jos answer below I’m trying this “Reply” button.
ownCloud users do not hide and I’m putting my username on what I say (including my email address and website). This is a public comment section and not everyone criticizing Nextcloud is an ownCloud employee. Seems like you’re using double standards constantly attacking others but not being able to deal with critizism yourself.
In the article it is said that:
“On our installation with several apps installed, Nextcloud shows each as a small icon, accessible directly from the main menu top bar. If you install a lot of apps in Nextcloud, however, you also must use a dropdown menu feature to see the rest:
Nextcloud Apps Menu
In ownCloud you must first click on the dropdown menu, but then the app icons are larger and have text also:”
Just great -P Based on the article Nextcloud is yet another open source project which is not accessible with the Orca screen reader. Ireally do not understand why too many open source developers do not seem to care to make their software accessible to blind and other visually impaired users. It really is not acceptable that the user interface has only icons because the screen reader can not speak icons or pictures, it can only speak text. So there really MUST be text labels. Really, what is wrong with you guys? It really can not be so hard to design the user interface so that it is accessible for everyone. I personally am blind and I would like to set up my own personal cloud. I will try both systems some day in the near future. But it really does not sound good that even as simple thing as that is designed so that it most likely is not accessible with the Orca screen reader…
You will greatly appreciate Nextcloud 14, a LOT of accessibility work was done, from allowing keyboard navigation to adding labels everywhere for screen readers. There is still more to do, but bug reports and help are extremely welcome.
See some of what has changed here:
https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+label%3A%22feature%3A+accessibility%22+is%3Aclosed+milestone%3A%22Nextcloud+14%22
I wrote an article about the accessibility improvements in Nextcloud 14:
https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-14-the-most-accessible-nextcloud-ever/
Your help in moving it even further is of course welcome!
ok, I have read all these things regarding number of commits last month, fancy features you might find here or there, good. But one point I have not seen seen yet is a real performance analysis. Because you can always say “my product does this and the other does not” but you also have to prove that what is done is well done. So when you compare two features, you have t put these in stress conditions so that to see if both behave as expected: 2 products can display exact same features, but still, one can be good and the other show some weakness. And if you have to chose for production, you might pick the good one regardless spreadsheets.
Hi Sebastien,
You are absolutely correct. Features does not equal quality! Luckily, our experienced engineers (most have 5-6 years experience working on this code, as almost all server engineers joined the new company) have made big improvements in reliability and stability as well. And performance!
Check out the results from the migration of the TU Berlin, over 20K users and a massive (near 50%) performance increase: https://nextcloud.com/education and https://nextcloud.com/blog/tu-berlin-halves-database-load-by-migrating-22k-users-to-nextcloud/
You can also simply look a bit on social media and see what people’s experiences are. Nextcloud has been widely praised for having massively improved the reliability of the upgrade process, for example, which was (and is) a major weakness of ownCloud. Of course, we also have a big advantage in security – while ownCloud also has a hackerOne project, the web is full of security experts complaining about slow response times and other problems with it.
We’ve also made big strides in the mobile clients, which have consistently far better ratings and reviews on the various app stores.
And there is much, much more. But try it out for yourself and you’ll see 😉
Dear Jos,
“Almost all server engineers moved to the new company” is a wrong statement and is purely fictional. The fork happened 2 years ago and some of the main core developers quit at Nextcloud after only 1,5 years. Compared to that I’m not aware of a single core developer at ownCloud who quit and like said above ownCloud’s team was significantly extended.
About the performance issue Nextcloud achieved at one single customer: If you think about a 50% performance increase switching to a software which basically has the same codebase it would be foolish to ignore possible server or software misconfigurations which explain the heavy server loads.
The statement the web is “full of security experts complaining about slow response times and other problems with it” is utterly vague and misleading. The web IS full of ownCloud threads which clearly shows that ownCloud has a far bigger user base than any other OSS CCP out there. This also has been proven by the latest Gartner Report which is the most important market analysis in IT. With 25 million users worldwide ownCloud is the only OSS cloud solution being named in the report which proves the impact ownCloud has. Nextcloud is far too small and irrelevant when it comes to having deep experience in really big, professional and serious scenarios.
Some examples?
Sciebo, the academic cloud, started with 100k users and is extended to 210k users: https://owncloud.com/lower-saxonys-universities-build-up-their-own-cloud-infrastructure/
Digilocker provides a national cloud for > 13 million registered users with 3 billion documents: https://owncloud.com/government-india-banks-owncloud-digilocker-project/ and https://digilocker.gov.in/public/dashboard
While Nextcloud is not able to develop an own desktop client (1:1 copy of ownCloud’s codebase) ownCloud provides some real developments like Virtual File System ( https://owncloud.com/intelligent-synchronization-improved-ux-virtual-file-system-introduced-into-owncloud-desktop-client/) or even Delty Sync (https://owncloud.com/owncloud-implements-delta-sync-technology/)
Two examples when it comes to security: ownCloud was GDPR compliant from the beginning while with Nextcloud you had to additionally install a “GDPR package” (https://owncloud.com/welcome-to-a-gdpr-world/) and ownCloud is also the first and only EFFS solution which received the ISAE3000 certification (https://owncloud.com/first-filesharing-solution-receives-isae-3000-certification/).
And there is much, much more. But try it out for yourself and you’ll see 😉
Hi mister anonymous,
That is an impressive list of false and misleading statements you have there! Congratulations.
Now I know I shouldn’t get into it – I kept my initial reply polite and short for that reason. But I can’t help myself so I will just reply to the first claim about the team and leave it to readers to figure out how much the rest of your claims is worth.
> “Almost all server engineers moved to the new company” is a wrong statement and is purely fictional.
Oh, no, it is VERY true. Even today, after 2 years of none of our employees adding any code to ownCloud, still half the top-10 contributors of all time (ignoring the bot) to ownCloud works at Nextcloud. Only TWO work at ownCloud.
https://github.com/owncloud/core/graphs/contributors
> The fork happened 2 years ago and some of the main core developers quit at Nextcloud after only 1,5 years.
Yes, we had one core developer leave us for a very well paying job as security researcher at Facebook, good for him! He’ll be at the Nextcloud conference in a few weeks, if you want to ask why he left. And 4 interns or part-time developers joined and left after we started Nextcloud. I still have to update the team page, will do after the conference.
> Compared to that I’m not aware of a single core developer at ownCloud who quit and like said above ownCloud’s team was significantly extended.
Let me enlighten you with just two nice picks:
* Your head of engineering (Klaas Freitag) left 6 months after we did, had been with ownCloud since almost the beginning.
* your last remaining core client developer (Daniel Molkentin), also with ownCloud for 5 years.
Last week I saw another engineer from you asking for a job on Facebook, Dominik Schmid. You also just lost your managing director and head of sales, right? Perhaps it is time to update the team page.
You should then also remove the half dozen Spanish team members (like Raquel Perez, https://github.com/rperezb, former team lead, or Sergio Bertolin, https://github.com/SergioBertolinSG, developer and tester) who don’t actually work at ownCloud anymore for over a year, and perhaps not show every employee at the Woboq consulting firm, given you only have one FTE.
I only stop here because our page isn’t up to date either…
I don’t really want to respond to the rest what you said, it has no more validity, and I think most readers get the point that this is just a downward spiral of anonymous bile thrown at me.
Have a nice day.
Hey Jos,
I’ve already made the switch to Nextcloud not long after the announcement, and haven’t bothered looking back. I found this article when looking into assisting someone else who wasn’t sure which software to use, so I wanted to confirm my suspicion that Nextcloud remains on par (if not better) than ownCloud in terms of reliability and whatnot.
Just wanted to say, thanks for your work on the software and for posting these responses. I know it can get frustrating having to defend yourself by what is basically a smear campaign from ownCloud employees in the comment section. I appreciate that you focus on explaining where Nextcloud is trying to improve rather than just attempting to discredit any competition. As you know, it’s business and the product should speak for itself. Shame to see somebody (who – despite their claims – does not share any identifiable information except that they work for ownCloud) shame somebody on false facts, or discredit code forking as “code copying” just because your product is continuing to do well on its own.
I don’t have a huge horse in the race, but it was nice seeing your responses even though I know it’s not something you enjoy having to explain.
All of this and that… but after installing Next-Cloud for first time today, I can’t find a way to get rid of the Private Keys error message at top of screen. No matter how many times I change my password. I then try to update the personal private keys section and it just keeps “saving” and spinning. Can’t find a fix for this anywhere.
We moved our projects to Nextcloud. For us, it was about community, responsibility and freedom. Also, we like to have Nextcloud because we are able to communicate within instead of using our separate ventrillo and irc servers — like when we were using owncloud.
Yes I am an ownCloud employee and sheesh, this article hurts. But putting all loyalities aside, some points are not quite right. You mentioned NC has 2-3 times more commits than OC. That might be but does it really say anything about how active or good a software is? We know the difference, we looked into it. NC does a lot of small commits, OC does more bigger ones. These numbers need to be but in relation.
OC has a bounty program too: https://hackerone.com/owncloud
I’m not trying to convince anybody and i’m surely not entering the bashing mode. Both products are active and both have their right to exist. But just stating things without looking into it might draw the wrong picture.
I am currently running OwnCloud 9.1, have been running OwnCloud for years and am mostly happy with my installation. I’m here because of Floccus, specifically sync with newer versions of Mozilla Firefox. I’m still running Sync 1.1 with Palemoon and Firefox v33. It is getting harder to maintain this installation. Floccus promises similar capabilities with the newer Sync 1.5 which supports the latest Firefox releases. However as the Floccus developer points out, Mozilla doesn’t maintain the “API” and instead treats the interface as a “private interface”… bad news for us customers. But Floccus supports both Firefox and Chrome, so there is a potential escape to Chrome for Mozilla Firefox customers like me if Mozilla abandons/breaks the interface again. But I like Mozilla Firefox because of Mozilla’s focus on customer privacy/security, similar to what this article describes for NextCloud, which with Floccus, will support the latest FF with Sync 1.5/Accounts.
The choices are still not clear. There are many issues and both sound like great products. Reading this comparison reminds me of the split between OpenOffice and LibreOffice, which I use heavily for editing Open Document files. With this in mind I suspect it isn’t a matter of “if”, rather “when” I’ll need to switch from OwnCloud to NextCloud.
I’ll have to experiment to see if Floccus can replace OwnCloud’s Mozilla_Sync and still work (maintain full operation) without an internet connection. This will make my decision. I’m not in a rush, and I’ll keep watching OwnCloud to see what happens.
Changing any significant part of my infrastructure usually requires a significant investment in time and effort which I’m not eager to accept. This kind of change takes time away from family and what I do for a living. I want to minimize the time any software change takes away from business and family.
I also didn’t see support for SVN or local GIT (just GitHub). I need SVN support for Altium Designer/Circuit Studio, and GIT for everything else.
Dear Craig,
you might be remembered of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split which is understandable. But don’t ignore the fact that after two years of ranting against ownCloud Nextcloud still has the smaller team, far less customers to gain experiences from and a far smaller user base. They might appear more active since they’re blaring against ownCloud wherever they can. But ask yourself: Where would be Nextcloud without ownCloud? Where would they copy their code from?
The decision is not easy but I think it’s good to look behind bold marketing statements to see what you really get.
Dear hurradieweltgehtunter,
Sad you still don’t want your real name to show up, but I guess you have good reason to hide.
I really don’t want to get into a big “he says she says” but you do make some big claims you have no proof of. Unless you are tracking users (would be interesting) you don’t know how many there are, neither do we. All public indications show that Nextcloud probably has far more. Just a few things to compare:
Forums:
http://central.owncloud.org/about
https://help.nextcloud.com/about
-> Nextcloud has more users active per WEEK than ownCloud per MONTH.
Website visits:
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/owncloud.org
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nextcloud.com
-> speaks for itself.
Google trends is easy to check – Nextcloud has overtaken ownCloud by 25-30%.
Then there are customers, sadly many don’t want us to talk about them, same with ownCloud, but with 300K users at the German Federal goverment, companies like SIEMENS, organizations like Wikipedia and so on, we’re certainly not behind.
I won’t go into the nonsense about us copying code, just like between LibreOffice and OpenOffice – what is there to copy these days? Nearly nothing.
no price comparison 🙁
The article compares features of 2 free open source editions, with some mention of paid features from the commercial edition of owncloud.
nextcloud has only the free open source edition.
In my view, there is not a huge difference for current owncloud users who are not computer-savy, since it probably will be an effort to convert, even if not much.
Note the article says that both are good options compared to the alternatives.
Great review. Thank you!
I found NextCloud to be the best, however the installation process is a real pain in my arse. Especially changing to HTTPS or just enlarging the disk space is a challenge, I suppose since its linux if your not a Linux wiz you will have problems with either platform 🙁
Well.. got it running on SLES 12 SP2, but it was the biggest pain in the ass. But at the end it’s just as stable as a rock.
been using ownCloud on ClearOS for over 5 years, works a treat…plus the COS install is redonkulously simple. Not enough diff between the 2 for little old me and my family to change to NextCloud… maybe next server build but for now happy with my ownCloud
In my experience, Nextcloud + docker has been the most effortless installation I have ever done. I was having so many issues with ownCloud’s mobile sync. Granted, NextCloud is “not” as driven to listen to the community as they bill themselves to be, and have for years sat on feature requests that ownCloud now has. But everything else works flawlessly. I can now feel I can depend on my setup more than I did with ownCloud.
Got nextcloud running last year on SLES sp2 VM with a 10 TB xfs on /srv/nextcloud-data, fully running with ldap. It was a pain in the ass, but it’s rock stable..
I’ve been running Nextcloud since the fork. It has been ulta stable and has world class security features. I just upgraded to NC 14 and it is quite impressive. Nextcloud Talk really enhances the collaboration of teams with integrated onlyoffice.
Wondering why when you read the google trend link you see that the first search query that “sum” nextcloud its “owncloud” ?
Compare Owncloud and Nextcloud CVE.
Nextcloud has a lot more CVE’s registered than Owncloud. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad sign.
CVE Nextcloud-Vendor https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/15913/Nextcloud.html
CVE Nextcloud-Server https://www.cvedetails.com/product/36804/Nextcloud-Nextcloud-Server.html?vendor_id=15913
CVE Owncloud-Vendor https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/11929/Owncloud.html
CVE Owncloud-Server https://www.cvedetails.com/product/38847/Owncloud-Owncloud-Server.html?vendor_id=11929
It is hard to deduce what the number of CVE’s for a project means. It can mean they don’t do anything about security, which means no security bugs get reported and fixed… You might think it could mean the product is no longer developed so all security issues are fixed but reality is that there is always more – even after years, security issues are found. It CAN mean there’s great work being done before products get released, though.
You have to compare with more things. Nextcloud has a very active security bug bounty program: we pay people who report bugs (and have a response rate of 100% and respond within a few hours, which makes us of the top programs on HackerOne). This, of course, leads to CVE’s. It also leads to LESS CVE’s as we make the engineers who caused the problem fix it, teaching them in the process. You can learn more about that on nextcloud.com/secure
ownCloud has a defunct HackerOne program (at least at the time of this writing and since at least a month or two), and given the statistics (a sudden drop in vulnerabilities) I think the most likely explanation is they stopped doing security work. Alternatively, their new engineering team is now suddenly writing absolutely perfect code and they decided to drop the HackerOne security bug bounty program because all the reports were false.
Anyone with any security expertise will just laugh at that idea…
Not sure if somebody told you this in 2 years since you wrote these comments, but, none of your responses here inspired any confidence.
Nextcloud doesn’t have delta sync and virtual files. These are so much more important for large-scale deployments than almost anything in your list.
For that reason, ownCloud is a better fit for my television studio which has to manage petabytes of files
The delta sync is ‘experimental’ (and can be built for Nextcloud too, if you really need it), the ‘virtual files’ solution we don’t believe is a good one (try going to the file open dialog in your video or image editor and open one of those files – they don’t even show up).
Neither product has a virtual drive, which is what the ‘virtual files’ are kind of a work-around for.
Not the OP, but I would be interested in having Delta sync for nextcloud too, as you suggest it can be built.
Don’t understand what you mean with virtual drive?
ownCloud client 4 mac doesn’t work fine, crash all the time. I’ll try nextCloud son
Thanks for the side by side. Stellar work.
Thanks for the excellent cloud platform comparison.
Without this detailed information, one will be lost as to the right option for a business.
Sometimes, we have to test the options before choosing.
NextCloud is a very stable option, easier to update and have seamless integration. But since I have been using OwnCloud for a while, it is difficult making the switch.
Nextcloud it is. More secure, updates worked since 5 major releases…
I run my own private cloud on a RaspberryPi Zero W. I had to migrate to NextCloud after DietPi decided to drop OwnCloud (a DietPi upgrade process went wrong and I had to rebuild the system). Both worked 100% for me so I have no issues with either. However, the Nextcloud Desktop client is a different story. It does not work as well as OwnCloud. Period. I cannot easily resolve file commit clashes. It has a more clunkier sign in process.
I have both and they seem to get along just fine.
Contrary to the headline, this does not tell the “whole story”. The “whole story” would include the reason why the fork happened in the first place? The originator and lead developer of ownCloud left his own company and forked his own project.. WHY? Usually these things happen because shareholders in a corporation, having gotten their hands on a good thing, want to monetize it in ways that are not acceptable to the open source community. Did that happen here? Or was it something else?? Without knowing that, there’s really no way for us to judge the situation or know who to trust.
This is a huge issue indeed.
You just can’t evaluate all the claims yourself and you don’t know whether someone is an expert, an employee of one of the two or just some guy on the internet who likes to tell stories.
In my opinion it’s not good they had to split up into two projects but probably some moral / economical reasons we don’t know are responsible. Together they could create a better product and also these continuous flame wars are kind of annoying and don’t help much to decide which product to choose.
Personally I don’t like that they are written in PHP and I’d love to see something built with Java, Go or something else more stable and enterprise-ready.
The upgrades are a pain with both products (or they have been when I had to deal with it the last time) but I know this is the case for a lot of tools out there, even on enterprise level (or especially there?).
In the meantime I consider building something else that is more modular and less complex. Maybe using an own app like baikal or the apple server thingy for handling calDav/cardDav is less pain and I’d rather use MineTime (https://minetime.ai/) to sync those than any of the Web UI calendars in OC/NC on a desktop computer.
If it would support iOS, Syncthing would be really nice for normal data but probably there is a workaround or other ideas how to get what I want – for now I think I’m just tired of trying to use the same products who’s maintenance took hours of my time.
Furthermore I agree:
– Creator leaving is no good sign.
– The more open licensing of NC seems better at the first glance.
– It’s near to impossible to decide without trying the products yourself. Take some time or just use something that is known to be reliable by sources you trust.
Frank actually gave a talk at FOSDEM about why he forked his own project and own company: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTKvLSnFL6I
Enjoy 😉
Not directly answering the “why” but this could give some insights:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170429021352/http://carlaschroder.com/nextcloud-is-dirty-deal/
I have used Owncloud for years and migrated all my installs to Nextcloud right after the fork.
I have to say that I never looked back. I would vote for Nextcloud.
Nextcloud implemented a LOT of stuff that were pending in OC for years, including new features and fixes. They also added the paid part in OC to the free version in NC (theming, etc).
I would almost never update OC, it was easier to just backup and redeploy a new version. In NC I don’t think I ever had problems to upgrade. Few days ago I upgraded an old instance 5 versions in a row, no problems at all.
I usually use onlyoffice instead of collabora and I usually run lots of apps as well.
I also find it funny that people make jokes about NC adding lots of commits and versions. As an user I am very glad for that. It is ridiculous to imply that the devs are adding code just because they want to have lots os lines committed. They actually did change a lot of stuff for the better. The new versions are a lot faster, even though they can do MORE stuff.
Dunno why some people complain about installing Nextcloud.
It is ridiculously easy and straight forward (never had issues).
Same experience here – could see the writing on the wall around Owncloud / Nextcloud 10 as I recall and by making the switch then it was seamless and Nextcloud upgrades since then have been very reliable when doing the initial code upgrade via the web interface but then the database upgrade steps using the command line.
I’ve used ownCloud on top of Univention for the last several years. A failed update to Univention broke it such the automated update process would not work anymore, and my Linux knowledge being limited I had no hope of repairing it. I don’t like that the only appliance option for ownCloud is built on top of Univention.
I recently downloaded the Ubunutu appliance for NextCloud and it took me about a full business day to get working. I use SMB external storage, LDAP integration, contact sharing via cardDAV, and HTTPS. I was surprised how difficult it was to get SMB working (never did at the application level as I had to mount a CIFS share in the OS), and I had to learn how to implement SSL in Apache manually. Other than that I’ve been pretty happy with NextCloud.
My 2nd biggest complaint about ownCloud is they charge for the Android/Apple app. When I first discovered that fact I almost scrapped the installation, but I fortunately found a free compatible version that is sadly no longer available (glad I saved the installer offline).
Personally, I’m glad to be using NextCloud now.
The pie throwing that begun in the replies, made me not want to use either software…
Yup. I came here trying decide which to use. I left here deciding that I didn’t want to touch either one.
Hi Guys!
As a complete neophyte, looking for something better than iCloud, I end up here.
Whoa!
Most of the actual ‘meat of this discussion is lost on me.
It appears that the intersection of Frank’s ‘baby and capitalism has given us NextCloud.
I’m cool with that.
Now, as a retarded noob, will someone please tell me if I need to walk away, ask for help, or learn more…before I go thinking NextCloud will be what I use instead of iCloud.
I would appreciate that.
ps…Jos P., I like that you defend your position.
pps…I’d like it even more if you (or one of your HomeBoys) would steer me to the right course.
Thanks again, EVERYONE, for all the input.
Currently testing nextcloud and owncloud because wanted to have on premise solution. Tested for one week each with Android app and rpi.
From my perspective – owncloud is not as feature rich as nextcloud, but it is stable and less power consuming. Android app has some nasty problems with power save features on s10. Whole configuration was pretty simple, added redis and APCu. Scanning folders with manually copied files was pretty slow.
With nextcloud there are plenty of features not shown in webbapp and android app of owncloud, also some extra features that can really help, like chose folder to sync or keep transfer when idle. But all of this is occupied by processor consumption, and pauses in usage of web interface and whole rpi. Android app hangs with no hope with system dialog decision ‘Should we close it?’. Web interface firstly died during installation giving timeout, secondly thumbnail refreshing is slower than in owncloud. From the other hand manually added files scan was pretty fast. This was my second week of cloud usage and from my perspective it is clearly visible that concurrency after separation between owncloud and nextcloud is not good for community but they are both closer to community than filecloud – their 14 days trial died wit no hope to successfull installation.
Wish well community to have well performing cloud on perm.
Few notes on the comparisons, would be great to get this updated:
1. Full text search of ownCloud is a free app since last year: https://marketplace.owncloud.com/apps/search_elastic
2. Since 10.5.0 ownCloud now supports file locking natively: https://doc.owncloud.org/server/10.5/admin_manual/release_notes.html#file-locking-in-the-web-interface
3. In ownCloud 10.0 “File checksums” (for reliable uploads) were implemented, might worth a look and to compare if Nextcloud is capable of this as well: https://doc.owncloud.org/desktop/2.6/architecture.html#checksum-algorithm-negotiation
Yeah, reading the comments made me not want to use either one. I’m looking for a product that’s built and maintained by people who can act like professionals.
How do you know that people building and maintaining the software have commented here?
Hi, I initially used ownCloud for a few years, then moved to NextCloud. At the start of the year I started having problems with NextCloud, but found it difficult to get into NextCloud community pages. Finally decided to go back to ownCloud, thinking it may be more stable. Still having some problems with cron and file size uploads. Sounds like both need to stop adding features and focus on stabalising their products.
Regards,
Mike
For fresh new instances perhaps NextCloud has more options and plug-ins etc., and generally has a more active community and development. For existing installations of ownCloud, made before even NextCloud existed, however, the cost of migration and testing whether everything works OK afterwards may not be worth it, especially if the installation is stable and works OK and fulfills the needs.
I have been using ownCloud on my own blade server for my personal purposes mostly as an archive of my photos etc, since 2013 (at that time it was freshly version 6), and deployed ownCloud 6 for the company I work for in 2014 which now serves cca 80 users.
Being quite stable and without too much innovation every month makes me quite happy as an admin who does not need to educate users and solve new support issues all the time when the UI changes every month or so. Reasonable development, bugfixes etc happens on ownCloud as well and reporting bugs on Github actually leads to quick patches and fixing them in the next release, and that is great. Compared to permanent changes in UI, behaviour and new bugs without the ability to report them and expect them to be fixed in Office365/OneDrive/Sharepoint that our company uses as well I am still a fan of ownCloud after all these years.
Well, reading kindergarten-like name calling going back and forth between representatives of the two companies on here makes me loath to try either product. If this is an example of the maturity of the people employed by either company.
Do you have any proof for your claims?
Because i’m not sure if the comments are from employees of both companies or just the one of Fanboys of both.
The main thing I’m looking for is command line access. If I’m looking to store stuff in the cloud, I want to be able to sync with files on my system. That’s the basic requirement. Apps and other features I can look at above and beyond the basics, but transferring files via a web browser is a nogo for moving large amounts of data to a cloud server.