Hey, what’s up?
Today, I wanted to talk and share my experience with librecloud.host, a new company that offers NextCloud hosting services.
If you’re interested in librecloud.host and NextCloud, if you’re looking for a free and open source alternative to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud or if you’re simply looking for a NextCloud provider, then this could be for you.
Let’s go right in!
1- WHAT IS LIBRECLOUD.HOST?
Librecloud.host is a new company that was found in 2021 which provides NextCloud hosting services.
NextCloud is basically a free and open source alternative to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud.
I created my account and subscribed yesterday, on June 17, 2024.
2- WHY LIBRECLOUD.HOST?
I decided to try librecloud.host because I really want to use NextCloud, and it is the only company that I found that offers something simple to understand and comparable to Google Drive and Microsoft One Drive.
When I look at the pricing table and features, I actually know what I am purchasing and getting.
I also considered getting a VPS, getting cloud hosting like Linode or Hostinger. But again, what they offer isn’t super easy to understand or estimate because it’s always based on computer ressources. Or if they ever do offer something easier to understand, like then it seemed inferior to librecloud.host.
Also, companies like Hostinger and Linode are quite big, well known and well documented. I’m quite scared that at some point they might turn evil and bad for customers. So I figured that I would try librecloud.host because it is new, and it hasn’t been well documented or reviewed yet. There is obviously a risk associated to that but whatever. I’ll give them a chance.
Another reason why I wanted to find a NextCloud provider is because I currently don’t have the technical skill to host everything myself. I bought a server a few months ago, and I realized that it is a bit harder than I thought. Also, in the next few years, I’m planning to do some world traveling and bringing a physical server wherever I go isn’t really a good solution. For now, having everything managed by a provider seems to be the best option for me. Maybe at some point in the future, I will decide to learn and host everything myself.
3- PRICING
As of right now, Librecloud.host offer only 3 monthly plans: Solo, Startup and Professional.
From my understanding, the only thing that changes is the storage available and the number of users.
Overall, it seems like they price every terabyte (TB) for $10 each. Except for the Startup plan, which is 14.99 instead of 19.99. I don’t know if that’s a mistake.
As of right now, there is a forever 20% discount if you sign up now. The coupon code is 20OFF. I can’t say if it’s going to be available in the future.
If you’re unhappy with the service, there is a 30 days refund policy.
4- MY EXPERIENCE
When signing up for an account, I encountered an internal error 500, which wasn’t so good because I wasn’t able to log in. It was saying to my that my email or password was wrong. I had to reset my password to actually be able to log in my account and that finally worked.
I was then able to subscribe to one of the plans using Stripe and the 20% off discount code. I choose the “‘SOLO’” plan because I’m currently alone and 1TB is more than enough for my needs.
Once I subscribe to a plan, I was asked to choose the server location. As of right now, there are 4. You can see their statuses on https://librecloud.statuspage.io/
Once I selected the server location, I had to select a white label domain name for my NextCloud instance. That instance was a subdomain of storageshare.net, a website that I don’t know. When chosen, I tried to access that domain, but nothing would happen. I would get to a page with an error saying “domain suspended or not configured”.
After maybe 10–15 minutes, I tried again and finally got the NextCloud login page with the SSL. But I didn’t get the login credentials, so I wasn’t able to log in.
After hours of waiting, I figured that I would contact the customer support about this credential issue and also because I wanted to set my own domain for the NextCloud instance. They were really quick to reply, give me default credentials and set my custom domain.
I finally got my NextCloud instance up and running. So far, it seems to be working nicely.
5- HOW I SEE THE FUTURE?
Now, I wanted to talk how I see the future from here because I usually try to avoid monthly subscriptions. I see subscriptions as a short-term solution.
For now, I think I will be using librecloud.host because I really want to use NextCloud, and I’m going to use it until I find a better alternative.
I understand that NextCloud is still very early in the process, but ideally, I would like to find a lifetime NextCloud provider if possible.
- Maybe librecloud.host will update their pricing plans to include yearly and lifetime plans.
- Maybe iBrave.io (which is the web hosting provider that I’m currently using) will add NextCloud to its list of supported apps
- Maybe I’ll decide to learn the IT skills necessary to self-host everything my self without relying on a provider.
That is obviously assuming librecloud.host survives on the longer term and not mess up anything.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I tried signing up for librecloud.host, which is a new company that acts as a NextCloud provider.
My hopes are that NextCloud will become as popular as WordPress is and that more people will choose it over Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.
So far, with librecloud.host, I had a few minors bugs related to the signup, which the support was able to quickly reply and fix.
I was then able to have access to my NextCloud instance, customize it and link my own custom domain.
I signed up and started using librecloud.host today. For now, it doesn’t mean much, and I don’t know what the future holds. But for now, everything seems to working as intended. Maybe I’ll find more bugs and issues as time goes on. Maybe librecloud.host will make some mistakes. We’ll see.
One important thing that I recommend is that if you’re going to use any NextCloud provider, make sure that all your data is safe and encrypted. One of the main reason to use NextCloud is to take control of your online privacy. If you leave it unencrypted, then your provider most likely have access to all this data.
So that’s pretty much it, I hope this was helpful to you. If this blog was valuable to you, you could consider following me on social media and if you have any thoughts or comments, you can leave them below.
I hope this helps, peace!
Leave a Reply