I like your enthusiasm but I am afraid you are overambitious. For me, it sounds a bit like GSuite alrernative hosted on Google Cloud. It doesn't make sense to me. What is the advantage of it being opensource when it is hosted by you. I have been hosting my own NextCloud instance on a bare metal server for years, email (exim, dovecot, roundcube), dns (bind) and it all replaced gsuite for me, they are awesome libre and…
Thank you for the feedback. The plan is as follows: Code is free and open source, but 98% don't have the time/the knowledge/the will to self host and will happily be us to manage and secure their data (like DropBox). Open source is not much a marketing argument, but in my opinion the only way to build a sustainable future.
With Nextcloud we don’t offer hosting for a reason – we would compete with Google, Dropbox, Amazon etc. in a race to the bottom, and it wouldn’t be private either. nathan-io said it very well already in their reply.
Another thing which then makes it super simple for people to self-host is a) PHP (yes, we got ridiculed soo much for that through the years …) and b) a dead-simple installation which in the simplest case (with SQLite) only asks for username and password you want for the admin. Most importantly, we use open standards and formats like WebDAV, CalDAV, CardDAV, IMAP, gpx, ActivityPub, etc. which makes Nextcloud universally compatible.
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However, for people who do want to simply sign up we do have an easy way: https://nextcloud.com/signup/ – this is also very presently available as "Sign up with a provider" in the mobile and desktop apps.
How it works:
- We have a list of participating providers (of which there are many more at https://nextcloud.com/providers/ ) with some strict guidelines like minimum storage space, minimum set of specific apps, uptime, reliability, etc.
- On the signup site or step we show exactly 1 provider (instead of a list like Mastodon etc.) to not overwhelm people with choice. This is based on your location and it just shows the nearest one, assuming it’s probably best regarding law and performance. There’s an option to "change provider" right below the provider.
- The only thing we ask for is your email address, and you only have to wait shortly while they provision your new instance. Sign up approaches the simplicity of Google or Dropbox this way.
I’m curious to see how it will fare for you, and wish you best of luck. If you ever want to join us or collaborate regarding integration, you are very welcome → https://nextcloud.com/contribute/