Ask HN: Is Nextcloud a Great Alternative to Dropbox/Google Drive for Startups?

I was wondering how easy and reliable it is to work with NextCloud in any professional setting. Does it put too much maintenance work on DevOps to a level that makes just using things like dropbox the standard way? I read that German government uses nextcloud because it offers better control over data. Do the companies care about this matter too? or should I just learn big cloud alternatives?

I can understand the attitude, but personally I don't second it.

I think the better question is: Do you care enough to divert some time away from building your product?

Some folks might be really motivated by not going with Google Workspace. Others don't care at all. There can be great motivational effects in doing what you think is right, I wouldn't discount it as a purely economical decision. Sure, tools need to be efficient, but we also need to enjoy them.

I have used both Own- and NextCloud in professional environments and it works fine. I had less issues getting it to work than a Domain-attached SMB storage. It's really important to know what you expect from it, but for a cloud storage & sharing solution it doesn't really have any drawbacks. As with most self-hosted software, you need someone to keep an eye on it and back it up from time to time. If that justifies paying Google to do it for you, that's also a reasonable proposition.

OwnCloud is popular in the /r/selfhosted scene on reddit, and is worth doing a search there: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/search?q=owncloud

OwnCloud and such wouldn't be considered a mainstream resume skill, and comes with its own upkeep and maintenance, along with ownership of the entire backup/restoration process.

I love many things about the hacker ethos, but after being in tech for several years, I’ve learned the following painful lesson:

Do not self host. The only thing you should ever self host is software your company wrote; unless you have a dedicated team for that specific piece of software alone.

You will never meet the uptime of Google Workspace. Your tools will never have less bugs. You will never meet the security certifications. Your real-time document editing, which may you think doesn’t matter, will never meet your employee’s expectations. You will never have as good tools for automated legal compliance. And if it goes down, which it will, even a day of downtime is more expensive than years of Google Workspace in all but the smallest of businesses. Additionally, every time something doesn’t work (or, heaven forbid, you’ve been hacked), your company’s employees and lawyers can and will blame you instead of an unmovable entity.