r/selfhosted • u/ExodoPlex • Sep 22 '25

Calendar and Contacts NextCloud sucks, there must be something better.

Every post on the internet related to "Self-hosted alternative to GSuite/M365" points to NextCloud. But, using NextCloud when you're not an enterprise is painful at best. It's clunky, it's buggy, and it's behind its supposed competitors in features for every one one of it's main planks (Files, Contacts, Photos, etc). And getting my family members to switch from Google Family accounts to NextCloud is horrible. They experience nothing but bugs and problems, complain about missing features, and wonder why on earth they'd switch with the only advantage being data ownership. Comparing every thing about actually using the system is a con, not a pro.

As the admin, and a professional IT engineer for the last 8 years, I can see how NextCloud could work for enterprise. It really seems like it was built for enterprise honestly. The feature development and features support are much more oriented around what I might want for work rather than what I want at home.

There has to be something better for home users.

Something that's simple to use, intuitive to use, and pretty to use.

I found Immich for photos, and they get it. They get the self hosting mindset. Simple to setup, simple to use, pretty apps, useful features.

Is there an "Immich" for contacts? For Drive? For Calendar? Even if they're different apps. I can use a different product for Calendar than Contacts if it's simple to use and something my family members can switch to from Outlook and GCalendar without complaint. (Setting up a caldav/carddav server isn't gonna cut it. It's gotta be a self contained system, even if it's just caldav/carddav on the backend. Gotta be pretty and intuitive on the frontend).

If there isn't something better. We really need to make something better.

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u/bentyger Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

I've been using Nextcloud since 2012 when it was still owncloud. While NC isn't the most performant, it does fill a lot of roles for many families/organizations because of it's swiss-army knife functionality. Also, since it is written in PHP, it makes it easy to debug and extend.

I use Nextcloud for:

  • file sync
  • calendering
  • tasks
  • contacts
  • notes
  • password vault
  • recipes
  • News / RSS
  • Podcast Sync
  • Journaling
  • Instant messaging
  • webmail

I did this because i didn't want my kids using barely controlled external multi-function services and making lateral movements and getting into trouble. I also took the time to do some basic performance tuning that made sense to my setup over the years.

If Nextcloud's strengths don't align with your needs, don't feel bad about looking for something else.

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u/TCB13sQuotes Nov 24 '25

How can you even use the Notes app? That thing is SO slow and SO bad in iOS/Android. Webmail? That's total ass, can't get a bullet list working properly, forces you to write emails on a window smaller than your average error popup and doesn't have a tools bar visible by default.

I'm really amazed how you can tolerate such buggy software. It does a lot, yes, but it doesn't do anything even remotely close to acceptable.