How We Cut Costs by Migrating From Google Workspace to Nextcloud and Dropbox

As a business with significant storage needs to store our content, we faced escalating costs with Google Workspace. This post outlines our transition to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance combined with Dropbox and how this move has saved us money and improved productivity. Additionally, we’ll explore potential future savings, other benefits of this transition, and some possible downsides of our new setup.

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The Initial Problem: Escalating Costs with Google Workspace

Google Workspace charged us $108 monthly for three accounts, providing 15 TB of storage. This amounted to $1,296 annually. As our data needs grew, additional storage costs became a concern:

1. Purchase Additional Storage: An extra 10 TB would cost about $300 per month, as shown here.
2. Add More Google Workspace Users: Each new user came with 5 TB of storage at $432 per year.

In contrast, an 18TB Toshiba MG09ACA18TE hard drive costs around EUR 300, a one-time investment. This apparent price discrepancy prompted us to explore alternative solutions.

The Solution: Self-Hosted Nextcloud for Local Storage, Dropbox for Off-Site Backup

We transitioned to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance on unRAID, utilizing 4 x 18 TB Toshiba MG09ACA18TE drives with a 5-year warranty. Note that with one drive used for parity, our usable storage capacity is 54 TB. We now use Dropbox as our off-site backup solution. Dropbox’s pricing is EUR 648 per year for 15 TB, with additional storage costing EUR 216 per year ($230) per 5 TB.

Additionally, after moving away from Google Workspace, we needed a new email provider. We chose Fastmail due to its seamless integration with our password manager, 1Password. Fastmail costs us $324 per year. Combining this with our Dropbox expenses, we now pay around EUR 648 annually for Dropbox and $324 for Fastmail, a significant reduction from Google’s $1,296.

Here’s a cost comparison:

Long-Term Savings Forecast

Since starting our video content production in 2019, we estimate a need for an additional 5 TB of storage approximately every two years. This growth rate is the lowest we can calculate based on our current data, but considering the growing file sizes of 4K60fps recordings compared to our initial 1080p30 recordings, our actual demand will likely grow faster.

Here’s a detailed savings forecast:

The currency conversion on 09/19/2024 for Dropbox costs is approximately 1 EUR = 1.16 USD.

Considering potential price increases by both Google and Dropbox, the savings will likely be even greater over time, as long as both increase their prices by the same or similar percentages. If Dropbox becomes more expensive, switching our off-site backup to another provider could be done quite easily thanks to our established backup routines.

Transitioning from Google Workspace to Nextcloud and Dropbox

By setting up Nextcloud on unRAID and using Dropbox for off-site backup, we have achieved significant cost savings. This setup not only reduces our expenses but also enhances our productivity by eliminating lengthy upload times and providing faster data transfers within our LAN.

Additional Benefits and Potential Future Savings

Our move to a self-hosted setup has opened up opportunities for further savings and control. Here’s a snapshot of our current savings with self-hosted solutions:

Replacing these services with self-hosted alternatives has already saved us a considerable amount, and there are additional opportunities for savings. For instance, Loom is another subscription we might consider canceling if we set up a similar tool like Snapify on unRAID. Moreover, if we implement a self-hosted version of Appflowy to replace ClickUp, we can further reduce our costs. Exploring more self-hosted solutions will allow us to take control over our data and cut unnecessary expenses.

Potential Downsides of a Self-Hosted Setup

While our transition to a self-hosted setup has brought significant benefits, it’s essential to consider the potential downsides:

1. Bandwidth Limitations: Our blog is hosted on our local unRAID server running Ghost.org in a Docker container. With a 50 MBit upload speed, the number of visitors the blog can serve simultaneously is limited. Although we benefit from faster networking speeds and 100% availability within our LAN, freelancers or collaborators might face challenges due to limited bandwidth and restricted access if our ISP encounters issues.
2. Maintenance and Technical Knowledge: Managing a self-hosted environment requires technical knowledge and understanding. While unRAID simplifies many aspects, it still demands a certain level of expertise to ensure everything runs smoothly. Unlike managed services, we don’t have dedicated support to rely on, so we need to handle any issues that arise ourselves.
3. No External Support: With self-hosted solutions, there is no customer support to turn to if something isn’t working. We are responsible for troubleshooting and resolving any problems, which can be time-consuming and requires a certain level of technical proficiency.

Despite these downsides, the cost savings and control over our data have been significant. We continue to explore ways to optimize our setup and mitigate any challenges that arise.

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