The software is free. The operations are not.

What is actually being compared

Nextcloud is open source software you install on a server you control. It is a full self-hosted platform - files, sync, sharing, calendars, contacts, chat, collaborative editing through an office integration, and a large app catalogue. There is no licence fee. There is an enterprise subscription if you want vendor support.

Droplana is a hosted client document portal. Each of your clients gets their own private, persistent portal for two-way document exchange, with document checklists, per-file comments, file status tracking and in-browser PDF signing. Clients never create an account. Data lives on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany.

One is far more capable and costs nothing to license. The other does much less and hands you the operations. That trade is the entire comparison, and it resolves differently depending on facts about you rather than facts about the software.

Side-by-side

The honest case for Nextcloud

It is strong, and it is not just about money.

You control everything. Location, retention, access, encryption at rest, who can reach the box. For a firm with a strict data policy or a client contract that specifies infrastructure, that control is the answer, and no hosted vendor can match it.

No processor relationship. If you host it yourself, there is no third party processing your clients' data, which simplifies one part of a GDPR conversation considerably.

It does far more. Sync, collaborative editing, calendars, group chat, an app catalogue. If you were going to buy three tools, Nextcloud may replace all three.

Costs stop scaling. Two hundred clients and eight hundred clients cost the same disk and the same effort. Beyond a certain volume, self-hosting is straightforwardly the cheaper answer.

You can leave whenever you want. No lock-in, standard formats, your own server.

If you have someone competent who already runs infrastructure, this is a defensible choice and you should take it seriously.

The honest case against it

Also real, and usually underestimated at the point of decision.

Someone has to run it. Security updates. PHP and database upgrades that occasionally break things. TLS certificates. Backups that are actually tested rather than assumed. Monitoring that tells you the disk filled up before a client does. This is a few hours a month when it goes well and a bad weekend when it does not.

"Free" is a licence, not a cost. A VPS with meaningful storage, plus offsite backups, plus the hours - price it honestly against a flat monthly fee before deciding. For a two-person practice the numbers are frequently closer than expected, and sometimes the wrong way round.

Uptime is now your problem. If the server is down on the day a filing is due, there is no support queue. There is you.

The client experience needs building. Nextcloud can absolutely take files from clients without accounts - File Drop and public share links do that well. What it does not give you is the per-client model: one permanent link that is the client's entire experience, a checklist they can see and work through, status per document, and a place where the whole relationship history sits in order. You can approach it with folder structures, apps and naming conventions. You then maintain that arrangement, and it lives in your head.

Configuration is a surface. A misconfigured public link, an app that stops being maintained, a permission that is broader than intended. Self-hosting moves these risks to you rather than removing them.

The question that actually decides it

Not "which is better software." This one:

Who, specifically, patches the server?

If you can name that person, they have time, and they will still be there in two years - Nextcloud is a good answer and probably the cheaper one at scale.

If the honest answer is "me, in the evenings, when I remember," then self-hosting is a liability disguised as a saving. That is not a criticism of the software. Nextcloud is genuinely good. It is an observation about what an unmaintained server holding client documents turns into after eighteen months.

Where Droplana fits

The narrow case: you want the client-facing document layer solved and you do not want to run anything.

You get one private portal per client, reached by one link that never changes. Clients never create an account or set a password. They confirm access by email magic link, or with a Google or Microsoft account they already have, and the device is remembered for 90 days. You set a document checklist per client so they can see what is still outstanding. Files come back organised under the client's name, including paper photographed on a phone. You comment on individual files, set a status on each, and sign PDFs in the browser with a public verification page attached to each signature.

Files, comments and metadata stay on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany, stored under opaque random identifiers, encrypted at rest with a key derived per client. A Data Processing Agreement is available on all plans; Practice and Studio include a countersigned one.

What you do not get: sync, integrations, a public API, collaborative editing, calendars, chat, or general-purpose storage. If you wanted Nextcloud's breadth, this is not a substitute for it and is not trying to be.

Some firms run both, and it is a sensible arrangement: Nextcloud internally where the team works, Droplana as the client-facing surface where documents arrive and leave. See the accounting practices page or the consultants page for what the client layer looks like in daily use, and the client portal guide for how to evaluate the category more generally.

Check our simple pricing (or start free)

Storage levels and team seats scale with your plan.
Security, per-client encryption, isolation, in-browser PDF signing, and data export are the same on every plan.
No per-client fees. Tax calculated by Creem at checkout.

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