3 years ago we used Dropbox. But more and more customer data had to be available for us on the “road”. So Dropbox wasn’t the right service anymore. One of the first alternatives was seafile (tested before owncloud) and since then we used this cool cloud-server on our own hyerrV server. So i can’t say much about owncloud.
Maybe someone else can highlight his own experiences with ownlcloud.
at the moment we have 3 happy customers, using seafile for all their documents and teamworking on that.
seafile pros:
easy installation (if you’re firm with linux cli)
very, very, very stable and fast!!! (i red much comments about slow owncloud clients)
integrated snapshot-system/versioning/trash for changed files/folders … as long as you want
multiple sharing options with external or internal users
possibility to register yourself on the webinterface (with admin approval)
nice webinterface (see screenshots) and client-software
clients for all platforms (win,mac,linux,android,ios)
user-db options (sqlite/sql/ldap)
very active development an support (also for community/free serverversion)
good documentation for admins (installation and configuration)
professional service and hosting (also in germany) available
seafile cons:
user-rights management is bit confusing for the first time
library (top level folders) and sub-library system (in comparison to normal folders) has first to be unterstand by customer (and admin ) and should be planed very well before create the librarys
only a filecloud-server, no contact or calendar sync!, but this is a clear desicion from the developers, there are enough groupware server on the market (imho)
comparison webinterface (also workplace for admin):
OwnCloud was my first try with own cloud . But after one day in the hotel with very bad internet connection, owncloud client deleted my local files and start download whole library. I was in HELL . This is wrong function. I fonud than some discusions about it, but nothing changed in new version. When it delete my files another time, owncloud was deleted from my server and than I found Seafile. Now I’m using Seafile over one year and everything is OK. So I suggest Seafile to every one. And thanks to versioning I saved many files for my customers with cryptolocker.
At this location, we use OwnCloud application on the in-house NethServer. We find it integrates easily and sync with the calendar function in Thunderbird/Lightning. Our main function though is to have a file store where we and our customers can upload/download files, using desktops, tablets, etc. For this requirement it works very well.
Pydio was not suitable for some users, and OwnCloud we thought was better than Seafile for sync. We did look at using others,(cloud versions) like DropBox, Google+, etc, but wanted something that we can control, and could be placed on our own hardware.
NethServer includes a one-click install of OwnCloud, (see here: NethServer: ownCloud 1-Click install – NethServer ) and with the NethServer community, if things went wrong, there is excellent help available.
We have been using OwnCloud on Nethserver now for about 3 months and it is very stable, upload/download of files from desktops is quick - a 244MB .mp4 file took 7 seconds to upload, and 11 seconds to download, tested using two Mint 17.3 desktops, one for upload, 2nd for download.
We have not had any problems like this; our field engineers use the Hotel’s own connection, however we do use VPNs back to the NethServer, before using OwnCloud.
) and should be planed very well before create the librarys
and welcome aboard!
. But after one day in the hotel with very bad internet connection, owncloud client deleted my local files and start download whole library. I was in HELL 
. This is wrong function. I fonud than some discusions about it, but nothing changed in new version. When it delete my files another time, owncloud was deleted from my server and than I found Seafile. Now I’m using Seafile over one year and everything is OK. So I suggest Seafile to every one. And thanks to versioning I saved many files for my customers with cryptolocker.
