Nextcloud, a leader in self-hosted productivity solutions, has welcomed Roundcube, an esteemed open-source email platform, into its family.
Surprising to many, this move can be seen as a step towards decentralizing global IT infrastructure, challenging the dominating grip of tech giants on email communication.
The Roundcube project has a successful 15-year history behind it. It’s an open-source web-based email client renowned for its user-friendly interface and feature-rich environment. It offers advanced features like MIME support, an address book, folder management, message search, and spell-checking.
Moreover, it excels in security and privacy protection, boasting features such as PGP, XSS resistance, and brute force protection.
Esteemed in highly regulated sectors, including education and government, Roundcube is utilized by prestigious institutions like Harvard, Cambridge, and the European Commission and is included in cPanel, aiding hosting by service providers like HostGator and GoDaddy.
However, the primary concern for the numerous users depending on Roundcube for their web-based email needs remains: what comes next?
What’s Next for Roundcube after Joining Nextcloud?
Well, if we can summarize – nothing changes. Nextcloud has explicitly stated in the announcement that the inclusion of Roundcube in its portfolio is not meant to replace its existing product, Nextcloud Mail.
With opportunities remaining to be explored, a direct merger between Roundcube and Nextcloud is not planned. Neither will Roundcube replace Nextcloud Mail or the other way around. The products both have strengths and weaknesses and as open source products they already do share some underlying libraries and tools, but remain independent offerings for overlapping but different use scenarios.
In other words, this addition is more about expanding the range of options rather than replacing existing solutions within their offerings, so both will continue as independent entities, capitalizing on their respective strengths and user scenarios.
From all this, we can conclude that the merger between Nextcloud and Roundcube can be seen somewhat in the light of a shared ideology on the crucial role of free software as an independent alternative to big cloud services rather than as the acquisition of software to be integrated into own solution already available.
To summarize everything said so far, Nextcloud aims to offer more choices in the face of robust, privacy-focused, and self-hosted alternatives, empowering users with greater control over their data and digital communication.
Finally, if you’ve chosen to bet on Nextcloud, our comprehensive guide, “How to Install Nextcloud with Docker,” is designed to assist you in efficiently and effortlessly establishing complete control over your data, using this outstanding platform.
To learn more, check out the official announcement from Nextcloud. As for Roundcube, they haven’t yet released any official statement about this matter on the project’s website.
