Leaving because of fast release cadence and no LTS branch → Syncthing
“nextcloud continues to be a massive maintenance pain due to its frustratingly fast release cadence”
Nextcloud alternatives: where its users went, and why they left
Nextcloud (nextcloud.com) has 38 sourced reports on Friction, drawn from 92 public source threads (as of 2026-10-15), 7 of them describing a move away. This page reads them for one question: if you are leaving Nextcloud, what do its users say they moved to, and what pushed them out?
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Where Nextcloud users say they went
Switching reports that name a destination. A count is the number of reports naming it, not a market share: Friction only holds what people say in public.
| Named alternative | Reports naming it | Newest report |
|---|---|---|
| Syncthing | 3 | 2025 |
| Dropbox | 2 | 2023 |
| Immich | 1 | 2025 |
| FolderSync | 1 | 2023 |
| Bitwarden | 1 | 2022 |
| Imaginary | 1 | 2018 (over 5 years old) |
In their words
iOS app lost pasted data after silently being disconnected
“it didn't sync because it was disconnected and didn't say anything, and it lost the data”
Windows client hangs, freezes and shows odd byte counts → Dropbox
“The Windows Client consistently shows random minus bytes, hangs, and freezes”
Moved to Syncthing because the server was a resource hog → Syncthing
“The former was a resource hog that was eating up too much everything on my modest VPS”
What pushes people away from Nextcloud
The most-reported open problems, worst severity first. Each links to the item with its source.
Daily cron job maxes out the CPU for about an hour after upgrading to 33 · Performance · Blocks work · 2 people
“once per day the cron.php process maxes out the CPU”
Photo backup is not reliable enough for backups · Mobile · Blocks work · 2 people
“it turns out it doesn't work reliably. It works most of the time, but for backing up photos it's not enough”
Updater fails when PHP iconv is disabled · Setup & onboarding · Blocks work
“The update the Nextcloud 35.0.1 on my server failed, since I had the PHP iconv module disabled”
Collaborative tags beyond the first five cannot be edited or applied · UI & usability · Blocks work
“i can only see a list of the first 5 entries of my whole tag list”
Database schema mismatch after manual upgrade to Nextcloud 35 · Reliability & bugs · Blocks work
“The database schema does not match what is expected for the installed version”
See all 34 themes for Nextcloud
Other workspace and files tools on Friction, and what their users struggle with
Switching trades one set of problems for another. The same evidence, for each tool Friction covers in this category:
Outline
17 reports · 71 source threads · most-discussed area: UI & usability
Notion
14 reports · 25 source threads · most-discussed area: UI & usability
Counts and reports reflect people who post in public (developers and technical buyers are over-represented). A tool with fewer reports is not a better tool; it may only be discussed less. How the data is built.