ownCloud Vs Nextcloud

if you want a cloud-based file synchronization and sharing platform you are really spoiled for choice but one downside that google microsoft dropbox and pals all share is that they're all controlled by somebody else if you want full control over your own data and don't mind running your own infrastructure to do it then two of the biggest players you'll come across are owncloud and nexcloud what are the differences between these platforms and which is best for you stay tuned and let's find out [Music] welcome back to the pro tac show i guess the first question to ask is why when many companies are moving to the public cloud would you want the complexity of running your own private file sharing platform honestly this isn't for everyone particularly when the likes of microsoft 365 and google workspace come with working solutions straight out of the box but there are reasons why doing it yourself can make sense the first is cost unsurprisingly it's often cheaper to do it yourself than pay someone to do it for you assuming you have the capability to do so this is a particularly big reason why hobbyists and home users do it they don't have enterprise budgets to play with it's the main reason i started using these solutions myself i used to use windows live mesh to keep my files in sync between different devices at home that's been dead a while now so if you've never used it it was a free peer-to-peer file synchronization tool that sync between devices locally or over the internet where microsoft came out with onedrive then called skydrive they discontinued live mesh and announced skydrive as a new tool to sync your files which meant it always went over the internet and now you had to pay for the cloud storage even if you didn't want the data to be stored online in onedrive other reasons you might want to host your own service are control and flexibility if you have strict rules governing where your data can live then it might be a necessity for most people that won't prevent them using one of the major cloud vendors but you will still get more flexibility from running your own rather than picking a one-size-fits-all solution back to my example at home i have our various devices syncing back to a server i also have some media services hooked into that so if i drop a music file on my laptop it syncs and becomes available to stream to speakers around my house if i record a video of my kids playing on my phone it syncs and could be played on the tv all of the data is automatically backed up from the central location as well meaning if a device fails i delete something or i get hit by ransomware and nothing is lost i have some other services hooked into the synchronized data as well but i'm not going to keep going down that rabbit hole it's just an example of how i've been able to customize my self-hosted service so that not only is it cheaper and faster than using onedrive it also provides me with functionality that onedrive can't other reasons you might want to self-host are vendor lock-in and security self-hosting particularly self-hosting using open source makes it much less likely a vendor can bend you over any kind of proverbial barrel or leave you high and dry if they go bust i mean it's not like that google or microsoft will go bust but there's also no telling what service they might just decide to kill off as far as security goes i think privacy is a better way to put it the vast majority of people who claim they're not using the cloud for security reasons are actually running systems less secure than the cloud ones they're avoiding that doesn't necessarily mean they'd be any safer by moving the public cloud but that's a video topic by itself and it's one i've already covered so i'll pop a link up here and down below as well for now let's talk more about uncloud and nexcloud specifically both share the same original code base and both were founded by the same person there are some technical differences and this gap is likely to grow as the two projects diverge but a lot of the differences are more philosophical or licensing related if i quickly open the two platforms side by side you can see they share the same dna so why did the founder quit his own company and fork his own code to start a new company the own cloud company was formed by the partnership of open source developers with a venture capital firm fundamentally the problem stemmed from these two groups of people not seeing eye to eye i'm not going to go into in detail because most of the information that has been made public is very one-sided and i don't think it'd be fair for me to quote it as fact without hearing both sides of the story you can look it up for yourself if you wish it reads a bit like a soap opera and there's clearly a bit of lingering hostility i would summarize it as saying that the open source developers and the venture capitalists had different motivations and failed to understand the others leading to a fair amount of internal conflict this drove a wedge between the company and the community it resulted in features getting blocked or removed and some utterly ridiculous supportability problems like claiming windows compatibility for the server despite never actually testing it and it not actually working properly the result was that 12 members of the core development team including own cloud's founder quit the company and formed nexcloud they forked the code and started developing their own version it sounds like this was probably the best thing for both projects to put an end to the infighting although clearly not a good thing for the employees of the u.s company owncloud inc who lost their jobs in the resulting fallout in effect nextcloud is a developer's original vision for owncloud and domecloud today is a management or venture capitalist vision for own cloud and for the record neither own cloud nor next cloud supports the server being deployed in windows anymore they came their senses in that one before the split occurred and decided if they couldn't make it work they should just be upfront about it so that gives you a very brief background back to the main question though which should you use that probably depends a little on the features that matter to you and whether you care about professional support the first major difference between the two is that next cloud is completely free whereas own cloud is only mostly free owncloud has proprietary features that are only available if you pay for their top tier enterprise subscription when nexcloud split they re-implemented those enterprise features as free and open source meaning xcode is fully featured whether you pay for support or just use the free version if you're not looking for paid support this pushes my recommendation strongly towards next cloud because the functionality isn't being limited another major difference between the two is that next cloud has expanded their focus from just file syncing owncloud is focused on being a filesync and sharing platform like dropbox that's what nexcloud is known for too but they have extended their toolset to include conferencing and groupware solutions they're aiming beyond dropbox and more at something like microsoft 365 or google workspace now in all honesty that may be their aim but those two are way ahead of next guide right now they're playing in very different leagues but that's to be expected given the relative sizes of the companies involved i don't personally use those in exercise features so it's irrelevant to me but if that is something you're looking for then uncloud aren't going down that route that's not a dig at one cloud it's not necessarily a bad thing to focus on doing one thing well and incurring less churn the last thing that matters when considering open source solutions is the community neither of these platforms exists by itself there are people contributing to them a quick look on github shows more activity on the next cloud side of things now it's a fair point the number of commits doesn't tell the full story next cloud could be making lots of smaller changes whereas owncloud is making fewer but larger ones that's an argument i've heard if we compare the two graphs so we can see that around june 2016 uncloud's activity dropped off quite noticeably whereas nexclouds didn't so what happened in june 2016 yup that's when next cloud split you can see the impact right there and to me that doesn't look like next clouds simply make a larger volume of smaller changes that looks very much like a lot of own clouds contributors jumped ship the difference is less extreme now but next cloud still seems to be the one with the most activity the google trends graph also shows interest in next clarity of overtaking own cloud around the start of 2018 based on web searches finally the selection of apps available to plug into nexcloud is larger than the equivalent list for owncloud quantity is not necessarily an indicator of quality of course but these metrics taken together certainly make it appear that nextcloud is a platform for the most activity and potentially therefore the brightest future now what if you're a business who wants the paid support option and you're not interested in the additional features that next cloud has you're only interested in the core functionality that is common to both this is a little less clear-cut as each have different support plans that don't quite line up next cloud's public price list starts at 100 users whereas own cloud starts at 25 users for the sake of comparison i'll use 100 users in both the cheapest option is next cloud's basic support next cloud's next option is their standard support but own cloud standard support is priced just a bit above next cloud's basic support and has a faster response time than both nexcloud's basic and standard tiers at that level own cloud looks like better value but remember you don't get the full feature set until you upgrade to own cloud's enterprise support this compares to next cloud's premium support and here next cloud looks better because they have options for tighter reaction times in one cloud although a wider range it has to be said at a lower price more critically next leg's premium support has an option for 24 7 support whereas owncloud's enterprise support doesn't appear to that's a really weird omission in my opinion i'm honestly not sure that 12 hours a day five days a week actually counts as enterprise support guys of course this is all just me going off numbers on the websites i have never used the support without these organizations so i can't tell you what negotiation is possible or what the quality of the sport is like that in itself is a very important consideration quality of support is absolutely critical when comparing the value you're getting so if any of you guys have used the support services of either own cloud or next cloud then comment below and let us know how you find it so let's bring this all together then usually these comparisons end up with a well it depends on your situation in this case i honestly think that in most cases next cloud looks like the winner depending on what you choose you're either getting more features or you're getting a 24 7 support option the only scenario that jumps out where own crowd is a better deal is if you want to pay for support but only mid lane support and you only care about the most limited set of core features or maybe if you want paid support for less than 100 users certainly since i replaced my own cloud server with next cloud i haven't looked back a couple of points i haven't touched on are performance and security when next cloud started off they made a lot of noise about these two things but i haven't come across anything in the way of independent analysis on it my own server was noticeably faster after switching to nexus cloud but i also upgraded the version of php and implemented a redis cache at the same time so that performance boost could have nothing to do with next cloud itself i only mention these points because they come up in google when you look for differences between the two platforms but the information i've seen all seems to come from next cloud themselves and i don't think we should just take the word on it unless it's been independently verified it's also worth mentioning that uncloud have announced they're moving away from php and to the google programming language and they expect this to boost performance it'll be interesting to see how the two stack up then and whether next cloud follows suit right i'm gonna leave that one there for now if you find this useful give it a like and you might as well subscribe to get updates new videos that is what your experience has been like these platforms particularly if you've used the support option because i've not all right then thanks for watching guys see you next time

Channel: Pro Tech Show

Views: 53,535

Keywords: Nextcloud, owncloud, file sync, file synchronisation, file synchronization, file sharing, enterprise file synchronization and sharing, personal cloud, private cloud, free file syncing, free file sharing, free alternative, on-premises, Nextcloud Vs ownCloud, EFSS, self-hosted, self hosted, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Seafile, Sync, pCloud, Egnyte, Dropbox alternative, Office 365 alternative, Linux, Open Source, Comparison, Technology, Tech, IT, IT Pro, IT Professional

Id: LGkR75TRS3M

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021