ownCloud is a self-hosted open source file syncing and sharing option, from the Boston-based company of the same name.
$5
per month
Pricing
ownCloud
Editions & Modules
Standard
$5
per month
Enterprise
$12
per month
For Teams
$13
per month
For Single Users
$15
per month
Community
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ownCloud
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ownCloud
Considered Both Products
ownCloud
Verified User
Strategist
Chose ownCloud
Other tools with similar functionality have been much better for me to use. However, my company uses ownCloud as its software of choice, so I use it to remain consistent with them.
The paid cloud services are expensive if you need a lot of data. You're giving your personal and business information to a data-hungry organization. Local NAS solutions are too slow. We run ownCloud on an older business PC and the performance is outstanding, even for remote …
ownCloud is better than Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive. I have not used Google Drive in some time now, so it may have improved. OneDrive has become better over time too, but my go-to is still ownCloud. Firstly, I prefer to have my data under my control. No other service …
I have a very similar experience between Google Drive and Dropbox. Both offer real-time sharing and collaboration. Google Drive limits external access and requires the recipient of shared files to have a Google account. In the case of both Dropbox and GoogleDrive, they limit …
ownCloud is one of the only self-hosted solutions worth it. It is open source and free, meaning that anyone with a Linux VM or an old laptop can host its own feature-rich cloud server. Many all-in-one firewalls will mix OwnCloud and CrashPlan, joining document management and …
I have used several products based on public (DropBox, Google Drive, Microsoft Drive, etc) and private cloud (Citrix). Most of them work on public cloud space so they could present problems with compliance. Also, it is usually difficult to protect the information contained in …
Due to the need to support many external workers it was mainly cost effectivity of open source solution: ability to allow external workers to access company files without the need to pay a license for each of them every month. Unfortunately, ownCloud does not offer until now as …
I'd easily recommend ownCloud to small businesses or teams within organizations. I've not used ownCloud in large deployments, so I'd hesitate before suggesting it in a situation where more than 10 users need support. That said, ownCloud is easy to set up and multiple instances could be used to service a large user base.
Attention and dedication to making the product a world class product with continual product updates.
Ease of use from an administration standpoint, and a very Clear UI.
The price -- you can't beat free!
Mobile applications are great.
Integration with public S3 cloud providers like AWS S3 and Wasabi S3.
2FA authentication is supported and works great!
Marketplace Add-Ons: I love this! For example, I can install an add-on that natively opens raw images. I am a photographer as well, and being able to quickly view the CR2 Raw Files direct from the camera is fantastic! This was made possible by a marketplace add-in.
Embedded Media Players: Photos, Music, and Video files can be viewed and played right in the browser window.
Sync application to keep local files on a computer updated with the files on the server.
Access control and permissions -- shareable links!
Inability to easily collaboratively edit the same document by several people. Some advances have been made with Collabora (Libreoffice online) but it is still very sub-par compared to Office365 and desktop/online Office editing Sharepoint or OneDrive documents.
Apps for Calendar and Contacts are not part of the basic core, and although now quite supported they cannot still be easily deployed in common email clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird, separate CalDAV and CardDAV plugins need to be installed. Embedding an email solution and plugins for major email clients so they can work just by entering username and password would be good.
Risk of moving important folders/files to another location just by random drag-and-drop on Windows. Sometimes this breaks public links that cannot be restored anymore. Reverting such mistake by any of the users is impossible automatically.
When some user deletes some data in a shared folder it is put into recycle bin of the owner of the folder. The user who deleted cannot himself/herself revert such action as he/she does not see the recycle bin (trash) of the owner. Also, there is no log in the recycle bin who deleted that file or folder.
OwnCloud is easy for me to use, and I believe it would be for others too. The barrier for most people will be the set up. For a technology professional like myself, ownCloud's setup is pretty straightforward, but it's not the sort of thing most casual users will be able to handle. Also, it's on the user to maintain the service. These can be taken care of by paying someone to do it for you.
Compared with other cloud services, ownCloud has been the most efficient. It doesn't create a noticeable drain on resources and very quickly syncs across all my devices. I'm usually able to save a file on my laptop and by the time I walk over and sit down at my desktop machine, it's already there. I don't need to wait as often as I have with services like OneDrive.
Regarding the community edition, there is a reasonably good support on the IRC, forums and in the issue section on Github. Perhaps a much more individual approach would be available if the premium support was chosen and the instance of the server was provided by the Owncloud company that also offers some premium extensions, not available generally. However, we did not need this level of support yet.
The paid cloud services are expensive if you need a lot of data. You're giving your personal and business information to a data-hungry organization. Local NAS solutions are too slow. We run ownCloud on an older business PC and the performance is outstanding, even for remote access, due to local syncing.