BACKGROUND: Microsoft is disabling Skype in May 2025. I do one-on-one video coaching sessions via skype. I have stuck with it rather than switching to Zoom, et al primarily because Skype let’s me initiate a call prior the the meeting rather than setting an appointment as on the other platforms. The permanent chat history (which the others do not have) provides an easy way to keep a ready record of of meetings attended (e.g., Did I have a meeting with John on the 7th or did he cancel?), files shared and things discussed. I can’t imagine how I would get by on Zoom without that feature.
QUESTION: NextCloud has so many options and moving parts I can’t quite tell if it can function as a substitute for Skype or, if it is, the best way to get started.
hey @rexall and welcome to the wonderful world of the nextcloud community.
Regardless of what Talk features or not and if that might meet yourt goals or not you should be aware of the fact, that NC is way more than just “Talk” - and that you can’t install Talk in a kind of standalone installation. You need to have the whole Nextcloudserver (with a ferw add-ons).
Of course you can disable certain apps if you want to…
As a first step I’d like you to signup with a free-hoster to find out what NC can do in general. And I’m sure that you’ll be getting good hints where to do that in the following answers (usually @devnull would come up with some good ideas).
Then, of course, you should try out Talk as well - as for me it runs flawlessly and there are certain nice gimmicks implemented with nwr versions.
After you made up your mind about if you are OK with NC and the keyfeatures you want/need you should put thought into selfhosting a server by your own at your place (which comes with certain maintanence-duties) or if you want to get yourself a so-called “managed” Nextcloudserver (of course not for free) with some hoster.