Run Your Own Cloud

Productivity On Your Own Terms

Right now, three main companies dominate the online cloud productivity space: Google with GSuite and Gmail, Microsoft with Office 365 and outlook.com, and Apple with iCloud. However, there are ways of removing you and/or your organization from having to use these companies altogether.

• Email, Calendar, Contacts
• Files, Photos, Music, and More: Nextcloud
• Desktop Integration
• Revisions
• Disclaimer

Self-host cloud services with Nextcloud.

Please read the disclaimer before proceeding. We review and update guided solutions regularly. If you have suggestions or requests, please write support@kfocus.org.

Email, Calendar, Contacts

You might want to replace your email, calendar, and contacts provider with something more private. Proton Mail, for example, has a free plan with a web interface. With their paid plans, IMAP and SMTP support enables one to use other email clients, like Thunderbird or Nextcloud Mail.

Running your own email server is no longer a good altenative for most organizations. Messages from private email servers are now blocked or moved to spam by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, or Facebook. Changing this requires substantial effort, and can take months or years. In contrast, services like Proton Mail have already solved this issue.

Send and receive emails with Thunderbird.

Files, Photos, Music, and More: Nextcloud

We recommend Nextcloud as the basis for the rest of what it takes to have an inclusive environment for synchronization and collaboration. There are a variety of hosted options, or you can do a self-hosted option.

If you choose a self-hosted option, we recommend a Nextcloud snap which is easy to install and run. The snap includes all dependencies, meaning it is all you need to get up and running.

Hopefully, your server is an Ubuntu server, in which case snap should be ready to go out of the box. In which case, installing the snap is easy:

For help configuring the Nextcloud snap, see this document. Once it's running, you will need to log-in as your administrator user. By default, you will have Files and Photos apps installed. If you would like to use Nextcloud as a web-based email client as well, you can install the Mail app.

You can synchronize your files to Nextcloud using the Nextcloud Desktop app or via browser drag-and-drop. For Music, simply upload your music files to your Nextcloud instance, and install an audio player app to your Nextcloud instance such as this one.

Nextcloud is highly configurable and has many other features and integration options. To see a full set of features, check out their app store.

Desktop Integration

Nextcloud can be integrated with the Plasma desktop environment. For instance, and as mentioned above, a desktop client exists to synchronize your files similarly to Google Drive or Dropbox. However, Plasma's Dolphin can also add a Nextcloud instance as a network drive.

Additionally, you can integrate Thunderbird with Nextcloud's calender and contacts features natively via CalDAV and CardDAV.

Manage your calendar from anywhere with Thunderbird and Nextcloud.

Revisions

This is a partial revision history. See the git repository for all entries.

• 2025-04-19 274c0ff1 Update grammar and content per audit
• 2025-03-28 446a108a Audit steps to be up to date. Minor revisions only.
• 2025-03-04 7e0f76de Add history to revisions
• 2024-09-10 fad4d6d2 Update Nextcloud and Thunderbird images
• 2024-09-05 14887652 Major Lightbox updates, fix some out-of-date documentation
• 2024-08-19 57a2389d Add white theme
• 2024-07-28 ee7b4601 Update metadata content, collapsable sections, lightbox
• 2024-07-26 7814a97d Sync primary images between guided solutions slideshow and articles
• 2024-03-19 627b3225 Add Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• 2023-11-18 e770b1c6 Add search and help bar
• 2022-08-29 a2c44802 Grammar tweaks
• 2022-08-29 645f5706 First Publication

Disclaimer

We try hard to provide a useful solution validated by professionals. However, we cannot anticipate every situation, and therefore cannot guarantee this procedure will work for your needs. Always backup your data and test the solution to determine the correct procedure for you.

THIS SOLUTION IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOLUTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.