I’ve been migrating small businesses in northern Italy from Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to open source stacks for a while now. One of the first questions I always get is: “What about file storage? We use Google Drive for everything.”
Fair question. Let me give you an honest answer, not a sales pitch.
What we’re actually comparing
When I say Google Drive in a business context, I mean the full Google Workspace package: Drive, Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Meet. It’s a coherent platform that works well. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
Nextcloud is a self-hosted (or managed-hosted) file sync and collaboration platform. Out of the box it handles file storage, sharing, and sync across devices. With apps you can add calendar, contacts, talk (video calls), and collaborative document editing via Nextcloud Office (built on Collabora).
So the comparison isn’t just “where do files live.” It’s about how your client’s business actually runs day to day.
The real differences that matter
Data location and sovereignty
With Google Drive, your files live on Google’s infrastructure. Full stop. For most small businesses this isn’t a problem until it is: GDPR compliance questions, a client contract that requires data to stay in Italy, or a sector with specific regulations (legal, medical, financial).
With Nextcloud you choose where data lives. I typically set up clients on Italian or Swiss-based infrastructure, choosing providers that keep data within EU jurisdiction. The client owns the data, period.
This matters more than people realize. I’ve had clients lose access to their Google Workspace because of billing issues during a holiday weekend. With self-hosted infrastructure, you control the keys.
Cost structure
Google Workspace Business Starter runs around 6.80 euros per user per month at the time of writing (check current pricing on their site as this changes). For a team of 8 that’s around 653 euros per year, just for the base tier. Storage limits apply at 30 GB pooled per user, and many teams end up on a higher plan within a year.
Nextcloud itself is open source and free. You pay for hosting. A decent VPS with enough storage for a small team costs 15 to 30 euros per month, depending on specs and provider. For 8 users that’s 180 to 360 euros per year, with no per-user licensing.
The math is straightforward. The savings compound over time.
Feature parity
This is where people get nervous. Let me be direct: Nextcloud is not Google Drive. Some things work differently, some things work better, some things are more manual.
File sync across devices works well. The desktop clients for Linux, Windows, and macOS are stable. Mobile apps exist for Android and iOS.
Collaborative editing works if you install Nextcloud Office. It’s not as smooth as Google Docs in my experience, but it’s functional for most business use cases. If your team lives inside documents all day, evaluate this carefully before committing.
Search is decent but not Google-level. For a team that stores lots of documents and searches constantly, this is worth testing with real data before the migration.
Sharing links, permissions, versioning: all there and well implemented.
Administration overhead
This is the honest part. Google Workspace has zero admin overhead for the IT person. You click, it works, Google handles updates, security patches, and uptime.
Nextcloud requires someone to handle updates, monitor the instance, and occasionally deal with issues. If that someone is you (the IT consultant), you need to factor this into your service contract. If it’s supposed to be the client on their own, think carefully.
For the clients I manage this is part of the monthly support I provide. It’s not heavy lifting, but it’s not zero either.
When I recommend Nextcloud
I push for Nextcloud when the client has 2 to 20 users with straightforward storage and sharing needs and no heavy real-time collaboration on complex documents.
There’s a compliance or sovereignty angle that matters. Legal practices, small financial advisors, healthcare adjacent businesses. Anything where “your data is on Google’s servers” is a problem worth solving.
The client wants predictable costs with no per-user licensing that grows as they hire.
They’re already moving to a Linux-based workstation setup, so the open source philosophy is consistent across the stack.
When I don’t
If the client’s workflow is deeply integrated into Google Workspace, a migration is painful and the value is lower. At Zerolock we’ve walked away from a couple of these rather than force a migration that would hurt the client more than help them. Heavy Docs and Sheets collaboration, Gmail filtering built into daily operations, Google Meet for all external calls: these are signals to evaluate carefully before committing to a switch.
Same with shops that use Teams heavily for video and internal communication. The Nextcloud Talk feature is improving but it’s not Teams, and if video collaboration is critical, that matters.
The migration process in practice
For a typical 5 to 8 person team, here’s roughly how it goes.
Set up the Nextcloud instance. I use Docker on a VPS, behind a reverse proxy, with automated backups to a separate location.
Migrate existing files from Google Drive using rclone. It handles the OAuth flow cleanly and can do incremental syncs during the transition period.
Install and configure desktop clients on each workstation. On Linux (Kubuntu in my case) this is straightforward via the official package.
Train the team. Usually half a day. Most people adapt quickly because the core experience, folder, file, share, is familiar.
Run parallel for two to four weeks. Both systems active, with the team gradually moving their work to Nextcloud. Then cut over.
The hardest part is usually email. If they’re leaving Gmail too, that’s a separate migration with Thunderbird or a webmail setup. But that’s a different article.
One thing I’d add
I’ve found that clients are more comfortable with Nextcloud than they expect, mostly because it looks and behaves like a normal file system. The “everything is a proprietary document format” model confuses some users who just want to store a PDF and find it later. Nextcloud handles that interaction more naturally.
It’s not the right tool for every situation. But for a lot of small businesses that don’t need the full cloud suite and do care about where their data lives, it’s a solid, honest choice.
If you’re doing similar migrations and have questions about the setup, happy to compare notes.