Nextcloud working/not working for editable docs on shared hosting

ā„¹ļø Support šŸ“„ Office
1

Any advice is really appreciated.

Iā€™ve joined the forum so I can search and bookmark all the similar posts but nothing seems very clear or useful. Many similar problems donā€™t seem to get solved.

Iā€™m attempting to install a single user instance of nextcloud on a shared hosting LAMP stack. All I need is editable odp/odt/docx/pptx etc.

I use the setup-nextcloud.php script to install. The install process works easily for sqlite and for mariadb. I have done 3 clean installs so far.

Iā€™ve tried both Collabora set up and Onlyoffice set up.

  • In Collabora setup I could only get it working using a demo server and even then only because I found that servers ip address in the logs to add to a trusted ip list in a custom config.

  • In Onlyoffice setup initially it worked straight out of the box, using community server and online office integration. But after working for several hours it suddenly stopped and returned various errors seemingly randomly. It cannot open documents, it fails to load the doc editing screen, just returns a blank window, the server cannot connect and returns a cannot access permission 403, curl timeouts or the commandservice.ashx 403. The weirdest problem is the Onlyoffice configuration page now doesnā€™t want to load the common settings anymore, they seem to have disappeared for a totally unknown reason.

Iā€™m now trying for a 4th time (clean install but with a different new admin user) to see if I can get it back to when it actually worked.

Is it actually possible to run nextcloud on shared hosting using Onlyoffice setup? Am I wasting my time?

2

Depends. The collabora and only office community backnds from the appstore will run binaries in the backend. If the provider doesnt allow that it will not work.

3

Though Iā€™m not tech enough to know what a binary is, I have also thought the host provider may be blocking the built in servers. But, if that was the case then Onlyoffice would never have worked. And it did, fully, for several hours.

4

If you had it running it should be possible to get back yo the intital state. Unless provider did not do any changes.

Best one of the two is collabora. And it should be enough to enabled the backend app. Then in the frontend say that you want the built in service.

5

Well thanks for replying, it keeps me motivated! I couldnt get Collabora working at all so fttb Ill stick with trying to get OnlyOffice to work.

6

Just updating as itā€™s useful for other readers. If anyone has feedback or expert advice Iā€™d appreciate it!

Iā€™m going to run two tests on the shared hosting. Both will use mariadb.

  1. Version with Collabora CODE and see if I can get it to work.

    • There is no clear documentation on which IPs need to be in the WOPI range. Iā€™m doing this: The Collabora CODE server is part of the remote hosting server so included in that range, plus you need your own IP range of the router thatā€™s communicating with the shared hosting platform.
    • there is no guidance on plain English explanation of trusted proxies (terminology is very unclear) in the config so Iā€™ll guess at what they are

  2. Version with Onlyoffice, community document server and onlineoffice integration. I will try to solve these problems:

    • the main problem seems to be when I enable onlineoffice integration that everything gets very slow, and breaks. Iā€™ve already tested this several times. Multiple error messages, random.
    • Onlyoffice config loads only the top half of the page, all the common settings disappear.

Many of these problems come up in forum threads with very few or any solutions.

Yes, Ive read multiple installation ā€˜guidesā€™ for Nextcloud and for OnlyOffice etc.

Iā€™ve never seen such a difficult, badly documented open source platform before. Iā€™ve installed/customised/updated multiple fairly complex things, eg like Moodle or Drupal Commons or WP multisites or others. Nextcloud is a mess from this pov.

Maybe itā€™s docker / VM only suitable but Iā€™m trying to find this out because there is no information anywhere (that I can find) to tell us.

7

When it is run on hardware that you control it works very well. But on shared hosting it might be a hit or miss. Collabora and only office is better off installed as containers. Better performance, more control.

8

hey @Penworks welcome to the community :wave:

from the information in this thread, youā€™re trying to run Collabora CODE built in service or ONLYOFFICE documentserver community in a hosted environment. generally you need an environment where you can/may/are able to run ā€œbinariesā€ which are executable scripts or programms.

this is not always possible in hosted environments and only your service provider can allow/enable this.

wow, you must be tech savy then and should be able to document it then?

9

no need for snark. Im frustrated. All the problems Im having (eeor codes, things getting slow, etc etc) are listed in this forum from people using docker etc. Thats why Im carrying on. My feedback is fair user experience. Im not here to argue with people.

10

sorry for my expression and your impression, that was certainly not intended

11

as others have already indicated, shared hosting can be a problem for Nextcloud for anything beyond basic functionality like file sharing, calendar, contacts, markdown editing, etc.

And itā€™s not just a matter of running binaries, which generally seem to work on the shared hosting platform youā€™re using. Itā€™s also about limited resources on shared hosting platforms.

Shared hosting platforms are often even more over-provisioned than cheap VPS platforms when it comes to CPU cores and memory. They are also usually optimised for ā€œclassicā€ PHP web applications and not for running relatively resource-intensive applications such as Collabora or OnlyOffice.

So Iā€™d say, whether you can ever get it to work properly depends very much on the capabilities and resources of the shared hosting platform you are using. In general, I would no longer recommend shared hosting if you want to use more than the basic features of a Nextcloud.

Btw, the ā€œbuilt-inā€ versions of Collabora and OnlyOffice, although they have improved over time and are quite usable on a reasonably specced server, generally still tend to be somewhat slower than a standalone installation via linux packages or Docker.

Sqlite could be another reason for the slow performance, as it only allows for one transaction per connection at a time. Nextcloud, unlike a CMS like Drupal, is quite heavy on the database. This also why Nextcloud recommends a Memory cache like APCu, or even an in-memory database like Redis to reduce load on the database, even when using a real database like MariaDB or PostgreSQL.

You should also configure PHP-FPM and OPcache according to the documentation, if you havenā€™t done so already, as it can have a huge impact on performance.

See the Nextcloud docs for more info: Server tuning ā€” Nextcloud latest Administration Manual latest documentation

But again, it depends on your hosting provider which of the above recommendations you can apply and to what extent.

12

CMSs like Drupal or WP can be finicky too, and they also need to be tuned if you have a lot of traffic. But there itā€™s usually mostly about requests to the published site and less about the CMS itself, unless you have a very large site with dozens or hundreds of users managing and publishing articles.

Nextcloud, on the other hand, is a completely different beast. You can see that if you look at the tuning guide I linked, where they turn many PHP settings up to 11, and even then it still needs extra binaries like notify_push to provide actual real-time collaboration features :wink:

Conclusion: If they were to develop Nextcloud from scratch today, they wouldnā€™t use PHP anymore, but something more modern. Maybe Go for the backend and TypeScript for the frontend, like OwnCloud Infinite Scale or its fork, OpenCloud uses. Of course, something like this canot be deployed on a classic web hosting platform anymore.

13

Thanks for your considered and informed comments. These will be helpful not only to me but all the others who come looking for this information.

So, Im updating here for other readers as well as responding to you :slight_smile:

Hereā€™s what happens to me, on shared hosting. My intention was NOT to install a Nextcloud for multiple users, but for a single person instance that could be used for demo purposes to others and some low use myself.

  • I have Opcache enabled but always get errors in Nextcloud. This also happens in a Moodle set up but opcache is definitely working because its listed in the home root phpinfo. The .opcache folder thats in the root folder of Moodle is full of cache files but I run a local php.ini to enable opcache. So its possible you need to run a local php.ini in the Nextcloud root folder to get it working for Nextcloud. I need to check this.
  • I can only use memcache with 'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\ArrayCache', to get memcache to stop throwing warnings in the system check. It then complained it cannot write to the /data/.ncdata file. File permissions were set at 0604 so Ive changed to 0704 to see if this makes a difference (not yet tested).
  • I think memory_limit is a big issue on shared hosting. My limit in hosting root phpinfo is 128mb and even though Ive tried running a much bigger limit locally this might be ignored if my package does not permit it. Im finding it difficult to locate that information.
  • When you run setup-nextcloud.php it appears that Collabora and Nextcloud Office are installed without being listed as recommended options (I may need to double check this). But I didnt realise this at first and it may compromise the database if you decide to change your choices and use Community Document Server - again I dont know, its a wild guess based on some other forum post remarks.
  • Ive tested both MariaDB and Sqlite and the problems Ive encountered affect both database setups, so I dont think Sqlite is responsible in any way for these issues
  • I canā€™t tell if the Collabora AppImage is running, though you imply it might be. But I cannot get the server to work at all.
  • Ive only ever had the doc editing working by using Community Document Server and OnlyOffice, with the officeonline integration app installed. This worked for at least 8 hours before it just stopped. This could be for any number of reasons, including things like shared server memory or other resources overload (as example).
  • In subsequent attempts to get Community Document Server and OnlyOffice to work, Ive had multiple different scenarios happen:
    • The common settings of OnlyOffice config section just do not load at all
    • .pptx, .odt or .docx etc files try to open and then an error 'could not load document (or simialr) appears
    • .pptx, .odt or .docx etc files try to open, the interface for editing will not load and you get a blank screen with the title of the odt or docx document
    • .pptx, .odt or .docx etc files only offer download
  • The first time I installed Nextcloud was on Sqlite, and I could swap between own server, inbuilt CODE server or demo Collabora servers.
    • The Wopi form field was visible and I experimented with IP addresses (I did not understand what WOPI was). I think I figured it out and did get it to accept IPs that did not throw errors.
    • I have only rarely been able to load the Wopi form field since in numerous other installations in fresh databases with other subdomains etc. This means I am not able to enter any safe IP addresses. This seems VERY weird. Ive looked into how to enter Wopi safe Ips in the main config fileā€¦
    • Demo collabora servers were affected by the Wopi settings and I had to locate the demo server DNS by locating the information in the logs. After that, the demo server worked without any problems. It was quick and efficient. NB not all the demo servers worked.
  • For information, Ive added what I think is a proper list of trusted proxies. This is my example, please correct me if its wrong: 'trusted_proxies' => ['54.93.173.153/24', '54.93.173.153/24', '169.54.78.85/24', '46.246.29.69/24', ],. These proxies are pulled from a list of possible choices available on the web at https://www.smartdnsproxy.com/servers/. There are other sites like this on the web if you search ā€˜list of proxy servers dnsā€™ or similar.
  • For information, Ive been running all tests on (different) subdomains, in fresh folders and new databases.
  • Something else to bear in mind is that Nextcloud is VERY file heavy and bloated. If your host-space has file number limitations (most do), then you need to be wary of this. The unpacked Nextcloud has a lot of files.

I hope this information is helpful to others who may be trying to set up Nextcloud, especially in shared hosting situations. Many of these problems are already in comments in this forum, encountered by people who are using docker or other VPS setups.

If you are a Nextcloud novice, basic information seems hard to come by, probably becasue you dont know what you are supposed to be looking for. Nextcloud would benefit from an idiots guide to introduce concepts and areas.

I think thatā€™s it for now. Iā€™ll update again later but I do not plan to run Nextcloud at all after a few more tests. I am now investigating other solutions for my own purposes of online file management and basic doc editing online.

14

Another option, which of course would cost extra, is to install Collabora or OnlyOffice on a VPS and then connect it to the Nextcloud running on the shared hosting platform.

Depending on your storage needs, this could be more cost effective than running everything on the VPS, as storage on VPSs is usually more expensive than on shared hosting. However, the overall performance of your Nextcloud would probably still be worse, depending on the features and tuning options your specific web hosting plan offers, but at least Office should work reliably then.

That beeing said, the best and easiest way to get Nextcloud up and running with Office, if you donā€™t want to host it on your own hardware, would be to spend a little more money, get a VPS with at least 4GB of RAM and install Nextcloud AIO on it :wink:

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15

Please let us know if you found one that works reliably on a shared hosting platform. And no, connecting to an external SaaS solution doesnā€™t count :wink:

16

It probably isnt worth me paying, which is why I started looking into this, just to test out. But these are useful options for me to know about. I hadnt thought about just hosting the doc editing server on a VPS, nothing else, so thank you.

For info, this is what the system says about the server Im on

Operating System: **Linux 4.4.400-icpu-101 x86_64**

CPU: **Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6130 CPU @ 2.10GHz (32 threads)**

Memory: **187.56 GB**

Server time: **Wed May 7 08:52:40 CEST 2025**
17

Yes, that would definitely be an option. How much you can save compared to moving the hole package to a VPS depends mainly on your storage needs. So I would also seriously consider the option of AIO on a VPS because shared hosting is less and less an ideal platform for Nextcloud if you want to do more than just simple file sharing.

Well, unfortunately that doesnā€™t say much because we donā€™t know how many users youā€™re sharing it with and what other ā€œrestrictionsā€ are in place. We would need to know the exact hosting plan youā€™re using in order to be able to tell you more. However, Iā€™m not an expert on the topic, as I havenā€™t used shared hosting in years, only VPSs, and my Nextcloud is hosted at home in a VM on my own hardware.

You may also want to contact your hosting provider directly, tell them what your goal is, and see if they can offer you anything that fits your needs. They may also offer Nextcloud and/or Collabora as a service, or they may be able to upgrade you to a higher tier plan or a custom plan where it might work betterā€¦

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18

I manage several instances of Nextcloud on shared hosting at Infomaniak. I did no manage to edit document using the built-in Collabora online. Now, thanks to a friend of mine, we installed a Collabora online server on a VPS lite which is linked to these different Nextcloud instances and allows to edit documents seamlessly on the different instances. Nextcloud urls must be authorized on the Collabora server and the url of Collabora set on Nextcloud office on Nextcloud side.

Such VPS is cheap and does the job well.