Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?
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@chetbaker there may be a terminology mis-match in our respective use cases.
Collaboration for me is working together on a document at more or less the same time. The number of times I have seen this actually happen in business is minimal.
Working together on a document at different times is way more common, so common that it is almost the only scenario to consider in practice. In this scenario, tracked changes is what really matters.
Unless they have made a lot of improvements I haven't seen, on this Google is a distant 2nd to MS Word or any of the alternatives.
In many sectors (eg legal and commercial teams), collaboration is a fringe outlier, tracked changes is what matters.
So in that scenario it's all about sync'ed file storage / cloud access rather than disparate local copies that delivers the productivity bonus.But hey, absolutely no problem if your world is different to mine.
And to be clear, I entirely support your desire to find an alternative to BigTech offerings and wish you every success.The fundamental problem I have with Google Docs or O365 is that they are 'walled gardens'.
The world doesn't need these.@timconsidine said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
Working together on a document at different times is way more common, so common that it is almost the only scenario to consider in practice. In this scenario, tracked changes is what really matters.
Unless they have made a lot of improvements I haven't seen, on this Google is a distant 2nd to MS Word or any of the alternatives.
In many sectors (eg legal and commercial teams), collaboration is a fringe outlier, tracked changes is what matters.Fully agree. I work in a legal team, tracked changes and using the exact same document format as the other contractual party is a must. You can’t start telling JP Morgan on the other side to please use markdown or „Sorry, you won’t see all my amendments because I used LibreOffice“. And in these industries, „collaboration“ is exchanging lengthy agreement drafts via email.
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@timconsidine said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
Working together on a document at different times is way more common, so common that it is almost the only scenario to consider in practice. In this scenario, tracked changes is what really matters.
Unless they have made a lot of improvements I haven't seen, on this Google is a distant 2nd to MS Word or any of the alternatives.
In many sectors (eg legal and commercial teams), collaboration is a fringe outlier, tracked changes is what matters.Fully agree. I work in a legal team, tracked changes and using the exact same document format as the other contractual party is a must. You can’t start telling JP Morgan on the other side to please use markdown or „Sorry, you won’t see all my amendments because I used LibreOffice“. And in these industries, „collaboration“ is exchanging lengthy agreement drafts via email.
@necrevistonnezr said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
start telling JP Morgan on the other side to please use markdown
Would love to see their reaction !
"what down ? I use mouse not arrow keys " -
@timconsidine said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
Working together on a document at different times is way more common, so common that it is almost the only scenario to consider in practice. In this scenario, tracked changes is what really matters.
Unless they have made a lot of improvements I haven't seen, on this Google is a distant 2nd to MS Word or any of the alternatives.
In many sectors (eg legal and commercial teams), collaboration is a fringe outlier, tracked changes is what matters.Fully agree. I work in a legal team, tracked changes and using the exact same document format as the other contractual party is a must. You can’t start telling JP Morgan on the other side to please use markdown or „Sorry, you won’t see all my amendments because I used LibreOffice“. And in these industries, „collaboration“ is exchanging lengthy agreement drafts via email.
@necrevistonnezr said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
on the other side to please use markdown
Markdown is a nice markup, but as said before not really handy for non technical users. Depending on the document you want to work on Markdown could also be "too simple", but Latex is an even harder pill to swallow for the average user.
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@chetbaker might be worth taking a look at https://docs.plus which is a fork of Etherpad with a load of plugins
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@chetbaker I think there are plenty of alternatives, but not a single all-in-one suite.
Etherpad, for instance, is in my mind as good as it gets for collaborative document editing. I say that because it is fast and light. And because I think the idea of people collaborating over a document's format (i.e. the final document) is just silly. People should be collaborating over content and then sending the final document to someone to produce the published/finished version.
Collabora is becoming really great (but, again, I really do not believe you need a full-featured suite for collaborative work).
Nextcloud, for instance, does group folders and file sharing much better than either Google or Office 365, which have always ended in a mess. I also think Nextcloud has by far the superior administrative options, especially for a smaller organization needing something simple.
Slack and/or Element are significantly better chat clients than either Google or MS offers.
Similarly, Jitsi, BigBlueButton and Zoom each do group calling better than what Google and MS offer. And Nextcloud talk is, I think, the very best for one-to-one calls.
There are loads of Kanban services out there that provide excellent team management services. Nextcloud Deck is pretty OK in this regard.
Google provides the gold standard in calendaring and email. Nextcloud's calendar is pretty good, but not nearly as good. Outlook is alright, but Gmail and Google Calendar are still the best.
etc, etc, etc.
The fallacy, I think, is that you need one single cloud service to provide everything. I'd rather specialist services, with something capable of tying things together. Nextcloud does a pretty good job of that. You can piece a lot of stuff together in one place, inc. element, jitsi, bigbluebutton, etherpad, though the mail client is seriously lacking. Element is also quite good at bringing various things together.
But, the one thing that I think gets missed in all of this is the desktop! This is still the place, and the OS itself, to bring everything together in one place. And if you look at it like that, the whole idea of one cloud portal that tries to do it all (whether Google, MS, Zoho, Nextcloud, or whatever) seems ultimately a silly idea: both unobtainable and not sufficiently flexible or specialized enough.
@eganonoa said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
And Nextcloud talk is, I think, the very best for one-to-one calls.
Especially if the plan is to work together on a document. I've found this experience to be great too (both co-editing an OnlyOffice doc, or working together on a Nextcloud Text doc).
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@chetbaker might be worth taking a look at https://docs.plus which is a fork of Etherpad with a load of plugins
@jdaviescoates said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
might be worth taking a look at https://docs.plus
Looks great !
A good candidate for Cloudron ?
(Haven't looked yet at the install and system requirements.)
EDIT : I see there is a Wishlist for this
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@jdaviescoates said in Is there any real alternative to Google Docs / Office 365 out there?:
might be worth taking a look at https://docs.plus
Looks great !
A good candidate for Cloudron ?
(Haven't looked yet at the install and system requirements.)
EDIT : I see there is a Wishlist for this -
since docs+ is really just etherpad with plugins, I wonder if our current etherpad could not be improved in that direction already.
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As per realtime collaboration on docs using Markdown I don't know if anyone had tried but HedgeDoc available here on Cloudron is amazing.
There also exist imho a great altenative to MS/G docs for the documents work with team collaboration it's called Quip and I use to use it a few years back when it started, and before I start to move to more private/secure/nosniff/notrack solutions, and it works pretty well, only in the like of MS/G they're SaaS and not FOSS. On that I'm with @timconsidine and would rather adopt and make all that is possible to get us/people away from big tech dominance as they've become a plea imo, especially in the last two years. So let's get back our tech, our web, our Internet and so let's work on open source as much as we can in all cases we can.
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For years I've been trying to find anything usable that can really compete with the collaborative doc editing capabilities that Google Docs or MS Office provides and I've found none.
I really think there should be a viable alternative for small companies to Google Suite / MS Office at least for collaborative editing / storage.
Yeah, yeah, of course I know OnlyOffice and Collabora. Actually, that's the solution I've found for this: Nextcloud + OnlyOffice (now I'm testing out Collabora because I can't believe how badly designed OO is).
But I'm still not 100% happy with it. I've found nothing remotely similar to what Fastmail provides for email+calendar but related with office solutions for teams (meaning collaborative folders and collaborative editing docs).
Am I missing something around? What have you found useful for non-techie teams that requires to have a shared folder and working together on docs? Thanks!
@chetbaker Try Group Office? It also uses Collabora for editing docs:
- https://www.group-office.com/
- https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2697/group-office-sogo-nextcloud-alternative-activesync
I used it years ago, before Google Apps was even a thing, and was very happy with it then.
Looks like they have kept pace with modernising the interface and refining.
The Studio is brilliant, and you can make almost any other business app with that and using existing data.
If I didn't already have a happy solution with EspoCRM, I'd say Group Office would be up there as one I'd be happy to use or recommend.
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Zoho would be high on my list for non-FOSS alternatives to Google Apps / Microsoft Office. They say a lot of the right things on privacy, ethics, and EU hosting:
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
Zoho would be high on my list for non-FOSS alternatives to Google Apps / Microsoft Office. They say a lot of the right things on privacy, ethics, and EU hosting:
@marcusquinn +1 for Zoho. I've used their premium services before I found Cloudron.
