Why are some companies looking for alternatives to Google Workspace?
Google Workspace is a pretty good set of productive tools and online services which can help companies bring their teams together and enhance their internal productivity. However, many organizations find its subscription plans very expensive and are not happy with Google’s privacy policy.
That’s why some big and small companies are looking for more privacy-friendly alternatives to Google Workspace which offer almost the same functionality.
In this article, we have put together top 5 collaboration platforms which could replace Google Workspace in your organization.
All the alternatives below are open-source and have all the necessary features that you would like to see in a productivity suite. Importantly, all these platforms are self-hosted and can be installed on your Linux server.
Let’s go through the list and find the best solution for your organization.
Kolab Groupware
Kolab Groupware is a highly scalable collaboration suite that provides shared email, calendaring, notes, tasks, file cloud and tagging.
At the heart of the Kolab project is the ability to communicate with ease and reliability. That’s why the platform provides feature-rich email, contact management and file storage services. It also allows companies to keep people in step with each other while staying on top of their own agendas with a set of task management tools.
What’s more, Kolab offers powerful scheduling, sharing and resource management tools to help people within your organization work together more effectively.
Outstanding feature: a good balance of security, privacy and user control features.
Kopano
Kopano is a collaboration platform with email, task management, video meetings, calendaring, contacts and file sharing within one single interface.
The solution includes a full set of communication tools, like email, live video calling and real-time chat to make it easier for the member of your team to interact and stay connected from any device, whether it be a desktop, tablet or mobile phone.
The platform can be connected to existing network storage, like Nextcloud, ownCloud and Seafile. This means you can store your files and easily share them with people within or outside your organization. Using Kopano Documents, you can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and enjoy the main benefits of real-time document collaboration.
Outstanding feature: secure email communication due to end-to-end encryption through the S/MIME plugin.
Nextcloud Hub
Nexcloud Hub is a fully on-premises solution that provides the benefits of online collaboration without compliance and security risks.
The platform makes it possible to share and collaborate on documents, send and receive emails and have video chats without data leaks. The full set of calendar, contacts, email and other productivity features help teams get their work done faster and easier.
With Nextcloud Hub, you can easily automate repetitive tasks and optimize business processes within your organization. Real-time document collaboration and editing is also possible.
You can even extend the Nextcloud functionality with a wide variety of apps available on the official app store or build your own apps to meet specific needs if they arise.
Outstanding feature: multi-layer encryption and machine-learning based authentication protection that prevent any data leaks and unauthorised access.
ONLYOFFICE Workspace
ONLYOFFICE Workspace is a bundle of web apps for efficient team management and collaboration that allows you to organize a secure productive environment to make you business grows faster.
ONLYOFFICE Workspace offers collaborative online editors integrated with a collaboration platform to manage all business processes within your organization: document sharing, project management, email, CRM, calendar, etc. You can also create corporate mailboxes and exchange messages in the chat.
ONLYOFFICE Workspace offers a flexible file management system because you can connect third-party storages (Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, kDrive, etc.) and directly work with your files stored there.
What makes ONLYOFFICE great is its collaborative capabilities. You can share documents with flexible access permissions (full access, read only, form filling, commenting and reviewing), edit documents in real time in two different modes (Fast Mode to show changes in real time and Strict Mode to hide changes until you save them) and leave comments for your co-authors.
Outstanding feature: secure document editing and real-time collaboration in Private Rooms where every character you type is encrypted end-to-end.
Zimbra Collaboration
Zimbra Collaboration is a secure collaboration platform for email management, calendaring, communication and tasks. With its modern, responsive user interface based on React technology, Zimbra helps you to boost the productivity of all users within your team.
Zimbra Collaboration offers chat and video calls for easy communication, a complete sync&share system for convenient file management and editors to edit and create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Generally speaking, Zimbra incorporates several open source projects under one supported and certified application to offer world-class open source collaboration software consumable for the enterprise.
Outstanding feature: integration with Slack, Dropbox and Zoom.
Conclusion
That was our list of top 5 open-source alternatives to Google Workspace. Our aim was to give you a brief overview of each solution highlighting their key features so that you can compare them yourself and choose the right solution for your business. If you liked the alternatives, leave a comment below and let us know which one you prefer and why.
