For years, I relied on Microsoft’s OneDrive — not for the Office 365 suite, but for its 1TB of cloud storage. It served me well for offsite backups and seamless syncing between my computers and phone. I even used the Personal Vault feature, though more out of curiosity than necessity. Later, I joined a friend’s family plan, making it even more cost-effective.
Nextcloud .. An Alternative?
But despite its convenience, reservations about pushing all my data to a Big Tech company increased. I had heard of NextCloud as a self-hosted alternative, but the idea of managing my own instance with all the risks of a failed update that might cut me off my data kept me from trying it.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m doing quite some #selfhosting already. But NextCloud would be quite essential and thus I didn’t want to be responsible for the robustness that I wanted.
Then I discovered Hetzner’s “Managed nextcloud: cheap cloud storage“—a fully managed NextCloud instance with 1 TB of storage for just €5 per month, billed monthly. No long-term commitment, no self-hosting risk? I decided to give it a try!
A clear upgrade over OneDrive
Right away, I realized this was the better deal. For the same price (or less, depending on your OneDrive plan), you get:
- 1TB of storage – identical to OneDrive’s offering.
- Full NextCloud ecosystem – access to hundreds of apps for productivity, security, and collaboration.
- NextCloud Talk – a built-in video conferencing tool that my friends and I have already tested successfully.
- European servers, no Big Tech – a major plus for privacy and data sovereignty.
Of course, no Word, Excel or Powerpoint — but that’s nothing I miss in my private life. LibreOffice is totally fine for me.
Easy Setup
Since Hetzner’s offering is fully managed, setup is dead easy. No server configuration, no security patches to worry about — just a ready-to-use NextCloud instance.
And after a couple of weeks of playing around with it now, I have decided to fully move over from OneDrive. And once that’s done, I’ll be canceling OneDrive for good.
Try it risk-free
If you’re also reconsidering OneDrive but hesitant about complexity or don’t want to self-administrate, Hetzner’s managed NextCloud is really worth testing. There’s no need to abandon OneDrive immediately — just sign up, explore the features, and migrate only if you’re convinced.
For me, the decision was easy: More control, better privacy, and more functionality that fit’s my needs — all for the same price. If that sounds appealing, give it a shot!
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