I shall never host my own instance. Having needed to work with militaries during my life, I wouldnât be able to reliably do so if I wanted to, and I donât - having it hosted for me is better in every way. After all, that is how most people in this world feel about the technology they use. However, NextCloud barely caters for this demographic.
Free trial - Cloud Storage made to trust - ownCloud.online provides a ridiculously easy way to test its software. NextCloud, by comparison, has Nextcloud providers - Nextcloud, which directs the user to GitHub - nextcloud/providers: community-maintained list of Nextcloud providers. This is objectively abysmal registration UX. Not solely must I compare (and consequently understand the feature differences between) the provided competitors, I must learn to trust another company at the moment of registration. It was this surplus of choice which caused me to delay even using and trialling NextCloud for a few years, and same reason why I donât use NextCloud for anything mission-critical now - I have no reputation to trust these myriad companies with.
NextCloud, on the other hand, has this brilliantly moderated, participated, and maintained Discourse forum for general discussion and support, and directly maintains the software. Were it to provide hosting for non-corporate entities in the future, Iâd switch in a heartbeat. Regardless, itâd be a cash injection! Look at how well Bitwarden does despite supporting self-hosting!
Hi and thank you for contributing with your oppinions.
First of all then we all have various personal taste and needs. So I am not and will never, judge any of the personal oppinions you have stated.
Nextcloud is a more mature and enterprise focused Open Source product than OwnCloud (I have also recently tested out OwnCloud, just to vet the differences). It has choosen different paths, hence has different use bases and different organizations chooses Nextcloud over OwnCloud.
When that is said, then here is my own personal oppinion - which is different than yours.
To me then having the power of choice over whom to trust with hosting my files, is an advantage.
I never liked the Free Trial by owncloud, as I as an European citizen, would then place my things in a US datacenter. On the other hand, then if just to test and try things, Nextcloud has lots more options for free tiers, andn not just for trials.
Personally though I choose NC or OwnCloud for the sole reason that I can choose EXCACTLY where I out my things, and because I have full control. In this case I self host, but I can spin up any hosted solution and move my stuff easily if I so desires in the future. For me personally, this is very important.
Why do I say all this? Well I respect your personal oppinion, as I hope you will respect mine. However use OwnCloud if it has a solution that fits your requirements and what make you most comfortable, or adapt to a Nextcloud solution that suits you most, if you wish to try out things. Nextcloud as a company, probably will not invest in building their own hosted solution, as that would canabalise on their partner channels.