Replacing Google Drive with Nextcloud: My First Month

Why Leave Google Drive?

Google Drive is convenient — until you think about what you're trading for that convenience. Every document, photo, and file sits on Google's servers, scanned and analyzed. For most people that's an acceptable trade. For me, after building a homelab, it started to feel unnecessary. I already had a server. Why was I still renting storage?

So I deployed Nextcloud and spent a month migrating my digital life off Google. Here's the honest report.

The Deployment

Nextcloud runs in Docker like everything else on my Optiplex. The official AIO (All-in-One) image makes it straightforward:

services:
  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    volumes:
      - nextcloud_data:/var/www/html
    environment:
      MYSQL_HOST: db
      NEXTCLOUD_TRUSTED_DOMAINS: cloud.theprojecthomelab.org
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  nextcloud_data:

Behind a Cloudflare Tunnel, it's reachable from anywhere without opening ports.

What Replaced What

The migration wasn't instant, but it was smoother than I expected.

What Worked Well

File sync. The desktop and mobile clients are genuinely good. Drop a file in a folder, it syncs everywhere — exactly like Drive.

Calendar and contacts. Using CalDAV/CardDAV, my phone syncs flawlessly. I stopped pumping my schedule into Google overnight.

Photo backup. The mobile app auto-uploads photos the moment I take them. The Memories app even does face grouping and a map view.

What Didn't (At First)

Collaborative editing was the rough patch. Nextcloud Office (Collabora) needs more RAM than I initially gave it, and on a 16GB machine running seven services, I had to be careful. Once tuned, it works — but it's not as instant as Google Docs.

Initial sync speed. Uploading years of photos took time. Be patient on the first big sync.

Was It Worth It?

A month in: yes, absolutely. My files are on hardware I own, in my house, reachable from anywhere securely. No subscription, no scanning, no lock-in. The Google One €3/month I was paying now buys nothing — because I don't need it.

The trade-off is honest: you take on the responsibility of backups and updates. But if you're already running a homelab, that's a responsibility you've accepted anyway.

My Advice

Don't try to migrate everything in one weekend. I moved one service at a time — files first, then calendar, then photos. By the time I was done, leaving Google felt less like a project and more like just... using my own stuff.

If you've got a server sitting there, Nextcloud is one of the most satisfying things you can put on it.