I just finished migrating from Nextcloud to OpenCloud. And after a few weeks of using OpenCloud, I just kept thinking… why didn’t I do this sooner?
Nextcloud is great and has an absolutely insane app ecosystem. With 10 years of development behind it, the app store is stacked. Calendar, contacts, email client, notes, Kanban board, RSS reader, password manager, everything is there. Nextcloud isn’t just file storage, it’s basically a complete self-hosted workspace.
If Nextcloud is that good, why did I leave?
I had been on Nextcloud for a long time because back then I was in the middle of de-Googling my life. Honestly, I was excited at first. Finally having my own version of Google Drive. And of course I had full ownership over my own data. Back then I just installed it because Nextcloud always shows up at the top of every list, and Nextcloud was actually what started my homelab hobby in the first place, before these past few months where I’ve been doing a bunch of app migrations left and right.
But Nextcloud has so many features that I genuinely don’t need, it feels bloated. And it’s so slow. The RAM usage is insane even when idle. Since my RAM was already running tight and I couldn’t afford to buy more right now because the prices are absolutely ridiculous, I had no choice but to migrate.
Honestly when I’m looking for software to install, I usually look for Golang first, then Rust if that’s available. I try to avoid Node.js, PHP, or Ruby (I’m not undermining developers who build with those languages, it’s literally just because my server specs can’t keep up HAHA). Yeah, the Mastodon instance I set up does run on Ruby and I’ve already explained my reasoning for that one.
So why did I end up choosing OpenCloud?
Truth be told I had already been thinking about switching for a long time, even back when I first installed Nextcloud, but I was too lazy to set everything up again and too lazy to look for alternatives, so I just kept going. Maybe I’d stumble across something better eventually. And I finally did, when I came across a post from someone who was into privacy stuff. I forget the exact details but they basically said OpenCloud was a Google Drive alternative. My first reaction was, why didn’t they mention Nextcloud? But at that point I was just mildly curious. I was still hesitant to migrate because my data had grown way too big.
Then I got fed up. Trying to send a file to a friend and just opening the client app took forever. Let alone through the browser. That’s when I started seriously looking for alternatives, and that’s when OpenCloud clicked as the right fit for what I needed. I also asked around in the Mastodon community and most people there said OpenCloud was the right call too. That honestly just made me more confident in the decision.
Was the migration hard? Well, for me it wasn’t. The documentation is already really clear over here. You just need to be patient and careful. Especially if your files are large. Back up your data first, prioritize what matters most.
And when it was all done? “Oh, THIS is it!” (that was pretty much my reaction), the file indexing is fast and opening folders doesn’t take forever to load. The sync? Finally reliable. Files show up across all my devices almost in real-time without needing to restart the client. The desktop client is way more stable and there’s no more getting stuck on a single file or random freezes. Bottom line, I have zero regrets switching to OpenCloud.
The only real tradeoff, in my opinion, is the Android client. Nextcloud felt better for me on that front. But that’s fair since the app is still pretty new. Either way it’s functional and runs faster.
Thanks, Nextcloud!