Are you tired of Google and Microsoft having access to your data? It’s possible to substitute G Suite or Office 365’s most popular features with self-hosted alternatives that respect your privacy and don’t charge per-seat license fees. It doesn’t matter if your employer doesn’t allow you to utilize G Suite or Office 365; your users deserve the convenience of similar communication and collaboration tools – supplied through 100% open source alternatives.

Having an open source license means that the code of these applications can be examined by anybody competent in the field. The maintainer cannot be forced to create backdoors that jeopardize your privacy this way. Furthermore, open source security researchers have an easier time uncovering security flaws, allowing faster patching.

It is possible to run self-hosted programs on bare metal on-premises or in virtual machines on the cloud platform of an IaaS provider. Your data can be hosted in Switzerland if you so desire. Because you are in complete command of G Suite vs. Office 365, you can tailor your data protection policies to meet your company’s specific compliance requirements. So your company can better respond to new privacy and security issues, such as data sovereignty and ransomware defenses, as they arise.

G Suite and Office 365 charge a set fee for each user, regardless of how much storage space they use. Because most email inboxes are unused, this price model favors Google or Microsoft.

Most small and medium-sized enterprises can save money and improve security and privacy by collaborating with an independent, managed service provider to host their inboxes. Open source collaboration solutions like Mailcow, Rocket Chat, and NextCloud can help you save money on G Suite and Office 365 subscriptions with limitless users.

Mailcow Is a Self-Hosted Alternative to Outlook and Gmail

Sogo Groupware and Rspamd are included in the mail server that is called Mailcow. Users can access their inboxes, calendars, and contacts through the SOGO web browser or connect with any email client, such as Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Microsoft Outlook, over IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV.

Rocket Chat Is a Self-Hosted Alternative to Microsoft Teams and Slack

Meteor and MongoDB power Rocket Chat, a chat application for teams and communities. Live chat is also available for customer care or technical support teams to use in conjunction with the application. 

Nextcloud Talk Is a Self-Hosted Alternative to Microsoft Teams and Slack

Nextcloud Talk is an on-premises, fully self-hosted audio/video and chat solution. It includes web and mobile applications and is meant to provide the highest level of security while remaining user-friendly. Nextcloud Talk reduces the barrier to communication and enables your team to interact with each other, clients, and partners at any time, any place, and on any device. Message status indicators indicate when a message is sent and received; users can disable this feature for greater privacy. 

NextCloud is a Self-Hosted Alternative to Microsoft One Drive or Google Drive

NextCloud is a WebDAV sync-based cloud storage and file synchronization application. It enables server-side encryption, which can be used with full disk encryption to provide additional protection. NextCloud permits the addition and sharing of external storage, such as local, NFS, SMB, and S3 mounts. You may enhance NextCloud with extra features, such as ransomware protection, Antivirus, and the Passman password manager, through the NextCloud App Store.

OnlyOffice Is A Self-Hosted Alternative to Google Docs, Office Online

OnlyOffice is a web-based office suite that connects with NextCloud to make document editing a seamless experience. Nextcloud All in one, it’s one of the primary office apps you can use. It is compatible with all Office OpenXML formats, such as.docx,.xlsx, and. pptx. Co-editing mode enables users to view the position of their teammates’ cursors in real-time and remark on their revisions.