
Ask HN: Google Drive/Office 365 alternatives - nanna
My partner runs a small charity in the UK whose office infrastructure is based on Google Drive. (Sheets, spreadsheets, email, etc). Her trustees are advising that since Google cannot guarantee that her data is being stored in the UK (apparently?), they need to migrate. Like seemingly every organisation these days, they&#x27;re looking at MS Office 365. But having a partner with GNU and emacs stickers all over their laptop, she&#x27;s wondering what alternatives are out there. It&#x27;d need to be low (or better no) maintenance, comparable in cost to Office 365 and quality too. It could be web-hosted or based on Next&#x2F;OwnCloud or something, as long as it works without a load of pain points. Oh and UK-hosted too. I assume others here must have thought this through already, so thought I&#x27;d ask the hivemind!
======
bartread
Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a
constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches.

Yes, file formats are usually interchangeable. No, that interchangeability is
not perfect, especially once you get away from word processing and into
spreadsheets and presentations.

The majority of people your partner has to work with outside of their charity
will be using Office so these small issues will constantly cause friction and
frustration.

Does your partner want to waste time on those issues or do they want to focus
their energy on the good work of the charity?

And, since we're talking about a charity, O365 is probably available at a
reduced price, or even free.

~~~
lewisjoe
Since this is the top comment, I want whoever stumbles here to be aware Office
365 isn't all that smooth either. There are things that Google's and Zoho's
offerings do much better than Microsoft's.

#1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments.
But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you
can't.

#2 Until recently office 365 didn't even have a grammar checker / proofing
assistant.

#3 You've worked on a document and intend to quickly send a pdf over to an
email? You download the file, convert to pdf and email it. Even a simple "Send
this file as an email attachment" isn't available in their editors.

#4 Talking about file-format compatibility, like someone else has pointed out
there's no guarantee that documents created in the online version is
compatible with their desktop editors. Too bad.

#5 In version history, how can you compare two versions of the same file?
Well, you can't.

Remember for Google and Zoho, cloud based document editors was their target,
right from idea to finished product. For Microsoft, it was an afterthought.
And it shows.

~~~
angrygoat
The biggest downside with Google's offering (I don't know about Zoho) is that
there is no way to easily export all of your documents to an array of bytes
that can be saved in another system – also known as a file.

Seriously – if you use Docs or Sheets and want to move off, you've either got
to manually export everything to an interchangeable format, or just give up
and leave a bunch of stuff behind.

This is a particular pain when shifting between Google accounts, or closing an
account down (for example, at the end of a job.)

~~~
paranoidrobot
I don't know what specific issues you're having, but for me I can simply do a
select-all in Google Drive, right click and hit Download.

After some time of processing it'll eventually give me a .zip which contains
all the documents and files. Google Docs documents are exported as MS Word
.docx files. I don't have any spreadsheets to hand, but I believe they're
exported as .xlsx format files too.

e: I see Google Takeout also allows you to export these, too in choice of
formats: [https://takeout.google.com/](https://takeout.google.com/)

~~~
woofie11
Yeah. It's pretty easy. Google Takeout is great.

BACK UP YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT PERIODICALLY. GOOGLE CAN AND DOES RANDOMLY DISABLE
THEM WITH THEIR CHAOS MONKEY ACCOUNT THWACKER. If they detect suspicious
activity -- and their algorithms aren't particularly good here -- they WILL
close your account, wipe your data, and there is no support.

~~~
beardbound
Fear of that is why I migrated all of my primary stuff off of Google during
lockdown while I had more time.I used everything google had too at the time,
even google Fi. My services are a bit more spread out now, but they are also
more robust and don’t have a single catastrophic point of failure, besides my
fragile body.

------
adav
UK registered charities get Office 365 for free. In my experience it’s
currently the best choice.

I supported all the technical aspects of a friend’s charity in their early
days. Originally set them up on Zoho for cheapness before they were a fully
registered charity. Zoho worked but caused plenty of pain for their less
computer proficient users (volunteers and trustees). The Zoho UX is very
clunky and the team required a lot of support. Migration to Office 365 made
everyone very happy because of the familiarity (everyone is used to it from
work). The charity requires less support time now and no longer complain about
Zoho’s limitations.

------
crazygringo
Note that since 2018, Google _does_ allow you keep your data in Europe, though
not specifically in the UK:

[https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/9223653?en)

(Though this may involve upgrading to a paid business license for G Suite, if
your partner is currently using the free charity tier.)

Just because of the headache involved in transferring, I'd ask her to check
with legal again. It would be very unusual to require UK-based storage
specifically.

If that truly is a requirement, then cloud storage is basically not an option.
Just keep everything as Office documents on a local network hard drive and set
up recurring backups to an off-site location (probably your partner's home).

~~~
jeffbee
> though not specifically in the UK

Since Google doesn't have any datacenters in the UK, Google clearly cannot
guarantee that your data is stored there. In fact it is guaranteed that your
data is not stored there.

[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/)

------
sgt
The answer is pretty obvious - use a desktop based office suite. It's very
hard for smaller players to compete with web apps like Google Apps and expect
similar quality. With desktop apps you have full control. I would suggest
looking into OpenOffice (or LibreOffice I guess), or simply just paying for
Microsoft Office. Then you can use Office365 but download the apps and store
files locally (or somewhere shared).

~~~
pabs3
OpenOffice is not very well maintained, I would go with LibreOffice these
days.

~~~
tmaly
We have both at the office. I have found the opposite to be true. OpenOffice
is able to open certain xlsx files where as LibreOffice cannot open them. I
cannot just downloaded the latest versions. I am stuck with what is available
on RHEL.

~~~
pabs3
If your version of RHEL supports Flatpak, I would suggest using that (or the
AppImage posted by someone else).

[https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak)

Either way, the fact remains that the OpenOffice development community
imploded and takes a long time to even fix security issues.

------
pratio
We recently moved our Office365 data to Uk. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/enterprise/mo...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/enterprise/moving-data-to-new-datacenter-
geos?view=o365-worldwide)

Google apps are a good alternative to Office365 but we haven't found anything
that matches Excel. We're a fintech so there's no way around excel. You'll
also have to deal with users who are using excel files locally.

~~~
unixhero
Agree. Having an Excel, Powerpoint and Word license together with Storage is a
killer feature. Mostly because I need it in the corp environment.

~~~
andylynch
Microsoft seems generally very good at supporting data residency for their
customers, didn’t know they have a UK Geo (never had to check but knew about
the Swiss one) but it is 100% sensible for their customers.

------
sto_hristo
Get a self hosted cloud like nextcloud and create accounts for each user.
Nextcloud will allow you to expose directories as webdav shares which you can
mount on each user's computer. Then just use desktop office suite like libre
office to do all work that will be inherently saved online. Users will be able
to share their documents freely between each other.

You will never the conveniences of the a paid powerhouse developed by
thousands of people over the years, but for next to nothing cost and a little
bit of effort you can be just as productive.

~~~
aborsy
I am no expert but Nextcloud requires a bit of set up and maintenance. With
the server exposed to the internet, shared folders and multiple users, you
have to worry about security if you could be a target. You need more than one
server for back up.

I would still suggest this approach; just saying it takes a bit of work.

~~~
sto_hristo
While it does take considerable effort to set it up in the beginning,
maintenance later on, at least in my case, is next to nothing. Updates happen
via single click from the Admin UI and only happen when you invoke them, at
your convenience.

For security it does allow 2 factor auth and the admin account has all the
tools to manage users and query what they have shared.

While it's not an enterprise solution... but for their use case, and with the
amount of features it offers, i think it's something worth considering even
with the non trivial initial setup tax.

------
rootsudo
Why? O365 is free if she's a charity, look into tech-soup, which is the
distributor for o365 for non profits.

Oh, GNU/emacs? Well, You can run your own OSS openoffice/sunoffice (whatever
it's called nowadays) and file sharing but it's alot of work and not no
maintenance.

site: [https://www.techsoup.global/](https://www.techsoup.global/)

------
nl
> Her trustees are advising that since Google cannot guarantee that her data
> is being stored in the UK (apparently?), they need to migrate.

She should push back on that, since there is no legal basis for it (except in
very specific circumstances).

It would be cheaper to get competent legal advice than do a shift like this
for many offices.

~~~
twoslide
This is correct. Current legislation (GDPR and the UK's implementation in the
2018 Data Protection Act) does not require data to be stored in the UK. G
Suite is definitely GDPR compliant, could the trustee be raising vague
concerns without good cause (they do that). There are other reasons to switch
from Google, but that's not one of them.

~~~
johnchristopher
Is the UK still bound to the GDPR though (considering Brexit) ?

~~~
DanBC
Yes. GDPR is the EU regulation, but member countries incorporated it into
their domestic legislation. In the UK that's the Data Protection Act 2018.

To remove GDPR from the UK we'd have to change the data protection act.

~~~
number6
Do you know if the Brexit would invalidate the act?

I am not an expert on UK Law but I also wondered if it is possible that the
reference on the GDPR would still be valid

~~~
DanBC
No, brexit will not invalidate the act. It's now UK law.

~~~
number6
Thanks for the clarification; most EU countries just made some kind of diff to
the GDPR and did not make it an explicit law

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Regulations are laws that directly apply across EU, unlike directives (which
bind member states to make a law that achieves the goals of the directive).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)#De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_\(European_Union\)#Description)

So you can make legislation around a Regulation but can't override its
effects.

------
Bad_CRC
In [next|own]cloud you can install libreoffice online and have a
sheets/documents/presentation with online editing.

~~~
Fnoord
Yep, it is called Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). Here's the
website [1] which also contains installation instructions.

[1] [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-
online/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

------
viraptor
You'll have to check with their support about how the location is selected,
but [https://zoho.eu](https://zoho.eu) exists and I'm happy with their
services.

I'd check the specific requirements though. Even DPA doesn't really require
hosting in the UK, but UK or country with matching privacy requirements, which
in most cases means whole EU is ok.

~~~
lewisjoe
I work at Zoho. I can confirm, all accounts signed-up at
[https://zoho.eu](https://zoho.eu) have their data stored within Europe and
complies with GDPR.

------
codegladiator
[https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-
online/](https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/)

not related to them, not even a user.

------
illuminated
I've been using Kolab [0] for years for self hosting the email, calendar and
tasks. There is an official integration with Seafile which gives you a "Google
Drive"/"One Drive" experience (you can also integrate it with NextCloud),
while recently there's been Libre Office integration available which gives you
word processing, spreadsheets and presentations in your browser; I'm also
using it.

The overall experience is not as smooth as with Google or MS, but I do have
Exchange protocol, file storage with management and online document editing
and it works.

First time it took me almost two weeks to setup everything, but I've been
doing the same setup for my friends, for their small to mid sized companies
for less than a week.

Their main website is not managed well but they have a pretty active
development community, very useful mailing list (you can browse the archive)
and somewhat dated documentation but the changes are not that hard to figure
out.

Once everything is set, the update process and maintenance are almost
automatic through the native linux package manager.

[0] [https://www.kolab.org/](https://www.kolab.org/)

------
qafy
I worked IT for a small org one summer that used the Synology suite for all
their internal operations. It is basically a self hosted completely OOTB clone
of Google Drive, Docs, Gmail, etc I now use it personal stuff as well.

Pros:

\- All the creature comforts of mainstream suites such as realtime
collaboration, comments, history, etc.

\- 2-way compatible with Office and Google so you can import docs to and from
those suites.

\- Encrypted document support

\- Self hosted

Cons:

\- Requires you to own a synology NAS to host it.

[https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/feature/office](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/office)

[https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/feature/mailplus](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/mailplus)

[https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/feature/drive](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive)

~~~
nvahalik
I had a buddy that has a Synology NAS and he runs a DB server on it... it's
horribly slow. Speed-wise how do these compare? It may not be an apples-to-
apples comparison, but it was unbelievably slow even for small operations.

~~~
jmnicolas
It depends on your NAS processor. I have the cheapest one drive Synology at
home, it's unbearably slow. At work I bought a faster one and it's OK.

------
pratio
As the user rootsudo mentioned, you might be able to use O365 for free if its
a small charity.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/offi...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/office-365-nonprofit-plans-and-pricing)

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/nonprofits/eligibility](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/nonprofits/eligibility)

You can create an account and upload the documentation
[https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/en-us/getting-
started](https://nonprofit.microsoft.com/en-us/getting-started)

------
7ewis
I believe charities can use G Suite for free, plus I know for sure there is a
setting where you can tell them to store your data in the EU, US or no
preference. However I don't believe there's a way to tell them to use the UK
specifically.

------
newyorker2
Libre, apache, onlyoffice, google, microsoft and someone mentioned zoho. So
many players in the market. Wonder if there's a player that can complete with
the likes of office365's feature set .

------
GoblinSlayer
[https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/list/](https://degooglisons-
internet.org/en/list/) I guess, they are in France though.

------
pellaeon
There's OpenAppStack [https://openappstack.net/](https://openappstack.net/) .
It is currently in beta but very promising.

------
philshem
ProtonDrive coming soon: [https://protonmail.com/blog/protondrive-
security/](https://protonmail.com/blog/protondrive-security/)

~~~
windthrown
It sounds like this charity is looking for an entire software suite
(spreadsheets, documents, etc) not just email and cloud storage.

------
quicklime
I'm not sure if this meets all your needs around data sovereignty, but Quip is
an alternative that does collaboratively-edited documents.

------
dqv
I'm not sure what features nextcloud has, but mailinabox.email does have it as
well as email and is very easy to manage. You're going to need someone who can
run the updates, but other then that I've been using it for the last 5 years
and it has been VERY easy to keep running.

I'm running ours on a $10 DigitalOcean box.

~~~
christefano
Thanks! I found this helpful.

To anyone else also just learning about Mail-in-a-Box:

“Mail-in-a-Box is based on Postfix, Dovecot, Z-Push, Roundcube, Nextcloud,
Apache SpamAssassin, Postgrey, Nginx, @konklone’s nginx config, and more.”

------
freddyym
Check PrivacyTools.io's recommendations.[1] Disclosure, I'm a team member
there.

1\.
[https://www.privacytools.io/software/productivity/](https://www.privacytools.io/software/productivity/)

------
markuman123
nextcloud with onlyoffice

------
aborsy
Regardless of where the servers are located, I would worry about a company
such as google having access to the data (that is not end to end encrypted).

~~~
chromedev
Google is FedRAMP compliant, however if you need to make sure it is encrypted
then that is what rclone is for. You could setup an rclone encrypted mount and
then share it on the local network.

------
DanBC
Trustees are not usually experts in data protection law, so I'd ask the
trustees to be providing a lot more information. At a minimum they need to
explain:

1) What law they think is being broken (and they need to actually link the
specific clause)

2) Why they think G Suite is breaking it (and they need to describe that
breach in terms of the law they think is being broken).

3) How much they're prepared to spend on changing from G Suite to something
else, including costs of migrating data, checking it's correct after
migration, re-training, and any possible software and support costs.

G Suite claims it's GDPR compliant.
[https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr](https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr)

~~~
andylynch
They are probably thinking about brexit and the UK data protection act - but
this shouldn’t need any action since UK GDPR has an amendment which recognises
EU data protection standards as adequate for the UK.

------
sidcool
I recommend Zoho. Less expensive and great quality.

~~~
Gys
Less expensive? Could you please elaborate? I looked at their website and
there is no pricing at all. Only 'Contact sales'. Even the 'sign up for free'
does not explain what I could possibly get 'for free'. If they are cheaper
than it would beneficial to them to write that in a headline ;-)

~~~
sidcool
Pricing:
[https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/](https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/)

Plan Details: [https://www.zoho.com/one/plan-
details.html](https://www.zoho.com/one/plan-details.html)

I am not affiliated to them.

------
micdr0p
Heard good things about [https://www.zoho.com/](https://www.zoho.com/)

------
nuker
Amazon WorkDocs and WorkMail

------
patel011393
I recommend considering AirTable if the group is willing to try something new
or check out:

Notes + PM -> notion.so

Word -> notion.so

PowerPoint -> slidebean.com or pitch.com

Excel/Access -> still AirTable

Outlook -> amazing email UX via hey.com for $99/year

I got many of these via alternativeto.net and producthunt.com

------
sys_64738
iCloud.

