This is just a Nextcloud rebrand with a confusing domain name. It claims "Core is [100%] Open Source" but no source code is provided beyond what's already available in the upstream projects, and it's unlikely that there will be (as this happens a lot). It's a one-man project without a track record or certifications based out of a shared office space [1].
And don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long as you're honest about that, which this initiative is not.
If you're looking for a Nextcloud hoster, there's a long list of partners here [2] that have contractually obligated themselves to contribute back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard.
> there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long as you're honest about that, which this initiative is not.
I thought Nextcloud was released under the AGPL, making this very much not okay by default. So either I misunderstood something or Office.eu got a permission to make non-free modifications? (Going by what you said; I have not dived into this.)
If it just says that it is partly based on Nextcloud, that does not imply they modified Nextcloud code at all. Other parts of the platform could be based on some other code, even closed one.
I laud the attempt and I think it's important there are more projects that try to compete with their American counterparts. I do want to gently note that if your entire pitch is "we are a bold, independent European alternative that liberates you from the hegemony of the established American players," maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."
> maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."
Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?
(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)
Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).
For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very close to a default term for the category of the software. Open Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.
One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.
I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.
"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."
You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?
Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."
But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?
It also possibly sets a false expectation of perfect compatibility… you can imagine bureaucrats trying to figure out if a file needs to be opened in Office or Office (new)
What is Office EU?
Office EU is a European productivity suite for files, email, calendars, documents and calls, built on Nextcloud Hub. It brings Files, Talk, Groupware and Office together in one platform.
Looking through the Office EU screenshots, they do look like Nextcloud Groupware/Files/Office with the logo changed.
Mostly adding this because I wasn't sure if it was a new product or not based on a first glance over the Office EU site. Nextcloud offers recommendations for providers on their site, most of which are in the EU [0]. The Office EU website seems to be new since around January of this year [1]. More managed hosts for Nextcloud is a good thing in my book, but I'd be a bit wary to host my stuff with a brand new provider.
It's always a good thing to have multiple players and I hope we can have actual EU-based alternatives, but I feel like this project, simply being a rebranded NextCloud as far as I can tell, is less interesting than La Suite numérique [1] developed by the French government or CryptPad [2] developed by XWiki, a French company based in Paris.
Is this by some random company that happens to rent an address in Hague? And even that is uncertain because there's no actual address except a vague OSM pin. And no company name either.
This seems untrustworthy, double so for a product that claims to prioritize transparency.
> Our headquarters are in The Netherlands (The Hague). Contact us to book a meeting or ask any questions.
Microsoft draws over 3 billion dollars out of Norway yearly. We are many that want this number much, much closer to zero. At it's small steps like this that makes it possible.
Well that's a pompous headline from the author's PR dept. "Europe" as in, "The European Union", or just some marketing trick based on making you believe it is to give it more weight?
I'm european and can still easily confuse the "European Union" and "Europe the general area" when context is lacking, it's not a big stretch of the imagination for me that people _anywhere_ could construe this as "official" as well.
All that it looks like is backed by some emanation from the city of The Hague. No mention of the EU proper. It's european owned and backed, sure, but not EU owned and backed.
> Office EU is a complete cloud-based office suite
Issue is.. if you are a traditional MS Office "poweruser", the last thing you want to do is spend your days in a web browser. These apps should also be available as native apps, similar to MS Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, etc.
Am I being dumb: they say it's "open-source software" but I can't actually find a link (or links) to the software / source anywhere on the office.eu website??
I can't find any info about the people behind it. The branding, mentioning "The Hague" and the rest of the landing page seems to try really hard to fool me into believing this is official from the European Union, I wouldn't trust them with anything, just get Libreoffice.
> Office EU will offer simple plans for individuals and teams. Pricing will be competitive and designed to be easy to understand. We will publish full plan details closer to launch.
> Will there be a free plan?
> A free plan is planned after launch. It will be a good way to try Office EU before committing. Exact limits and features will be shared when it is ready.
You can have hosted Nextcloud on Hetzner, with Headscale, email server, Vaultwarden, and Wordpress on European infrastructure (Hetzner) individually installed just for you from Federated Computer today for $19/month unlimited user accounts. I use it every day. Human support, too...!
3 Reasons:
- a significant investment from the Schwarz Group
- not just a marketing stunt, but a company with a long term vision to compete with big US tech
- clearly targeted at B2B with strong ties into EU politics
But I work in IT and Office 365 is not "Office suite online" anymore. Office 365 started with running Exchange in the cloud by MS as it is a PITA for IT. That was basically it.
Office 365 is now:
- Office suite, both online and desktop apps (Vital for full feature Excel)
- Entra for Users, Groups and Policy, SSO, conditional access, MFA (Entra is actually Azure AD, not sure if this is still the case but all Office 365 get an Azure AD tenant it runs on)
- Device management via Intune, that is policy, push apps/installs, reinstalls, Autopilot, run scripts etc on machines, device state config
- File sharing with Sharepoint & Teams & personal Onedrive (this also adds endpoint backup)
- Teams - chat, video, workspace - We live in Teams at work.
- Email (that includes admin, extensive admin)
- DLP - Data loss prevention
- The power suite where users & admins can make their own apps
+ MS Graph API for all this
Oh, and it comes with Copilot chat baked in (GTP 5.3 based now) with enterprise controls.
At a big company you can have people ONLY working on the Entra part to secure user accounts. Or people ONLY on Intune to setup and manage PCs, policy etc.
Office 365 is a beast and I will argue GSuite does not match up as companies basically HAVE to buy Slack on the side to get parity. Also sysadmin on GSuite sucks.
The link actually made me laugh but also sad. It is frankly embarrassing. We in EU can do tech Spotify, Klarna, Lovable, Mojang, Dice, Arelion, Ericsson and this is only in Sweden. Look at a 4G network, it is insanley complex.
So yea not sure what the solution is. But this is too little too late. It should have started in 2008 maybe they would have a chance. It is also sheer numbers. MS is massive and Azure/O365 is their cash cow now. They make sure it is damn good.
Going on a wild tangent here, why do these office suite companies stick to MS Word's principle of emulating paper and typewriters? Or rather, why do people kling to that metaphor?
Surely, Notion showed us that there are better working models.
This has been a longtime coming, it is not unique but it is still significant
The enormous momentum of the installed base and occupied headspace of Microsoft systems made them lazy and complacent decades ago. They have been peddling insecure unreliable software for a generation now, and believed their was no viable threat.
It took too long, but finally. Trump and his mad bad actions are good for the Europeans like a heart attack is good for your health
163 comments
And don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long as you're honest about that, which this initiative is not.
If you're looking for a Nextcloud hoster, there's a long list of partners here [2] that have contractually obligated themselves to contribute back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard.
[1] https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/officeeu-eng/
[2] https://nextcloud.com/partners/
> there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long as you're honest about that, which this initiative is not.
I thought Nextcloud was released under the AGPL, making this very much not okay by default. So either I misunderstood something or Office.eu got a permission to make non-free modifications? (Going by what you said; I have not dived into this.)
> maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."
Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?
(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)
Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).
One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.
I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...
"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."
You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?
Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."
But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?
Mostly adding this because I wasn't sure if it was a new product or not based on a first glance over the Office EU site. Nextcloud offers recommendations for providers on their site, most of which are in the EU [0]. The Office EU website seems to be new since around January of this year [1]. More managed hosts for Nextcloud is a good thing in my book, but I'd be a bit wary to host my stuff with a brand new provider.
[0]: https://nextcloud.com/providers/
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260116234614/https://office.eu...
[1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/
[2] https://cryptpad.org/
This seems untrustworthy, double so for a product that claims to prioritize transparency.
> Our headquarters are in The Netherlands (The Hague). Contact us to book a meeting or ask any questions.
source: https://office.eu/contact
I'm european and can still easily confuse the "European Union" and "Europe the general area" when context is lacking, it's not a big stretch of the imagination for me that people _anywhere_ could construe this as "official" as well.
All that it looks like is backed by some emanation from the city of The Hague. No mention of the EU proper. It's european owned and backed, sure, but not EU owned and backed.
Tsh, marketing. (see Bill Hicks on marketing).
> Office EU is a complete cloud-based office suite
Issue is.. if you are a traditional MS Office "poweruser", the last thing you want to do is spend your days in a web browser. These apps should also be available as native apps, similar to MS Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, etc.
e.g.:
- https://hostingdiscussion.com/news/european-cloud-workspace-...
- https://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/amp/plataforma-offi...
And it seems to be repackaged Collabora (~LibreOffice):
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/office_eu_suite/
Be careful.
> What are the pricing plans?
> Office EU will offer simple plans for individuals and teams. Pricing will be competitive and designed to be easy to understand. We will publish full plan details closer to launch.
> Will there be a free plan?
> A free plan is planned after launch. It will be a good way to try Office EU before committing. Exact limits and features will be shared when it is ready.
[1] https://office.eu/faq
3 Reasons: - a significant investment from the Schwarz Group - not just a marketing stunt, but a company with a long term vision to compete with big US tech - clearly targeted at B2B with strong ties into EU politics
https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
https://www.softmaker.com/en/
https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite
https://www.group-office.com/
https://www.icewarp.com/
https://www.bitrix24.com/
https://fengoffice.com/
https://www.hancomdocs.com/en/
https://www.larksuite.com/en_sg/
https://www.polarisoffice.com/en/
But I work in IT and Office 365 is not "Office suite online" anymore. Office 365 started with running Exchange in the cloud by MS as it is a PITA for IT. That was basically it.
Office 365 is now:
- Office suite, both online and desktop apps (Vital for full feature Excel)
- Entra for Users, Groups and Policy, SSO, conditional access, MFA (Entra is actually Azure AD, not sure if this is still the case but all Office 365 get an Azure AD tenant it runs on)
- Device management via Intune, that is policy, push apps/installs, reinstalls, Autopilot, run scripts etc on machines, device state config
- File sharing with Sharepoint & Teams & personal Onedrive (this also adds endpoint backup)
- Teams - chat, video, workspace - We live in Teams at work.
- Email (that includes admin, extensive admin)
- DLP - Data loss prevention
- The power suite where users & admins can make their own apps
+ MS Graph API for all this
Oh, and it comes with Copilot chat baked in (GTP 5.3 based now) with enterprise controls.
At a big company you can have people ONLY working on the Entra part to secure user accounts. Or people ONLY on Intune to setup and manage PCs, policy etc.
Office 365 is a beast and I will argue GSuite does not match up as companies basically HAVE to buy Slack on the side to get parity. Also sysadmin on GSuite sucks.
The link actually made me laugh but also sad. It is frankly embarrassing. We in EU can do tech Spotify, Klarna, Lovable, Mojang, Dice, Arelion, Ericsson and this is only in Sweden. Look at a 4G network, it is insanley complex.
So yea not sure what the solution is. But this is too little too late. It should have started in 2008 maybe they would have a chance. It is also sheer numbers. MS is massive and Azure/O365 is their cash cow now. They make sure it is damn good.
What we need to get independent is the public infrastructures.
That has nothing to do with current tensions between Europe and the US.
It’s just unbecoming of a nation to depend in its core on the good will of another.
As for open source as they claim ... can't find the code or a link to it on their site.
So far this smells like a lot of intent but I'm not sure what this is.
Surely, Notion showed us that there are better working models.
> You will be able to choose. Office EU can connect to different AI providers through APIs, such as ChatGPT, Mistral, and others
Seems a misstep to list an American AI provider first...
The enormous momentum of the installed base and occupied headspace of Microsoft systems made them lazy and complacent decades ago. They have been peddling insecure unreliable software for a generation now, and believed their was no viable threat.
It took too long, but finally. Trump and his mad bad actions are good for the Europeans like a heart attack is good for your health
That'll show those pesky Americans.