Nextcloud vs Synology Drive — When It's Time to Outgrow Your NAS

It is a familiar story for growing organizations: you bought a Synology NAS a few years ago, set up Synology Drive for file sharing, and everything worked perfectly. Your small team of five or ten people could sync documents, share folders, and collaborate without paying for cloud subscriptions. The NAS sat quietly in a closet, humming along and doing its job.

Then your team grew. Remote workers joined from different cities. Clients started asking about compliance certifications. Someone tried to access a large project file from overseas and waited minutes for it to load. The annual storage upgrade conversation became a quarterly one. Sound familiar?

This article provides a comprehensive comparison of Nextcloud vs Synology Drive for teams that have outgrown their NAS appliance. We will examine where each platform excels, identify the clear signs that your NAS is holding you back, and outline a practical migration path to cloud-hosted Nextcloud that preserves everything you value about self-hosted file sync while eliminating the hardware constraints.

Platform Overview

Synology Drive: The NAS-Dependent Approach

Synology Drive is a file synchronization and collaboration suite built into Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system. It runs exclusively on Synology NAS hardware and provides desktop and mobile clients for file sync, a web portal for browser-based access, and Synology Office for basic document editing.

Key characteristics of the Synology Drive ecosystem:

• Hardware-locked — Drive can only run on Synology NAS devices, meaning your storage capacity, CPU power, and memory are determined by which model you purchased
• DSM ecosystem — Tightly integrated with other Synology packages like Hyper Backup, Surveillance Station, and Active Backup, creating a cohesive but closed system
• QuickConnect for remote access — Synology's relay service allows external access without port forwarding, but routes traffic through Synology's servers with bandwidth limitations
• Limited scalability — Maximum user counts and simultaneous connections are constrained by NAS hardware specifications (CPU, RAM, network interface)
• Single-site architecture — The NAS physically exists in one location, creating a single point of failure and latency issues for distributed teams

Nextcloud: The Software-Defined Approach

Nextcloud is open-source file sync and collaboration software that runs on any Linux server infrastructure. It is not tied to any specific hardware vendor, meaning you can deploy it on bare metal, virtual machines, cloud instances, or containers. Nextcloud provides file sync clients, a full web interface, and an extensible app ecosystem with over 400 integrations.

Key characteristics of the Nextcloud platform:

• Infrastructure-agnostic — Runs on any server with PHP and a database, from a single VPS to a multi-node high-availability cluster
• Extensible app ecosystem — Over 400 apps available for document editing (Collabora Online, OnlyOffice), project management (Deck), video calls (Talk), email, calendaring, and more
• Enterprise features built-in — LDAP/SAML/OIDC authentication, file access control policies, audit logging, server-side encryption, and granular sharing permissions
• Elastic scalability — Add CPU, RAM, and storage independently as demand grows; scale horizontally with multiple application nodes behind a load balancer
• Multi-region deployment — Deploy in any data center worldwide, replicate across regions for performance and redundancy

Head-to-Head Comparison

Let us examine each critical capability side by side. For teams evaluating a Synology alternative for their growing file-sharing needs, these differences become increasingly significant as the organization scales.

File Sync and Sharing

Both platforms provide solid file synchronization with desktop and mobile clients. However, the details diverge when you look at sharing granularity and administrative controls.

Nextcloud's File Access Control app is a standout feature for organizations with compliance needs. It allows administrators to create rules such as "files tagged Confidential cannot be shared externally" or "files larger than 100 MB cannot be synced to mobile devices." Synology Drive offers no equivalent policy engine. For a deeper look at how to lock down file sharing in Nextcloud, see our Nextcloud security hardening guide.

Remote Access and Performance

This is where the gap between a NAS appliance and cloud-hosted infrastructure becomes most apparent. Remote access performance is the number one reason teams outgrow their NAS.

A Synology NAS connected to a typical business ISP with 50 Mbps upload bandwidth can serve about 5-10 users simultaneously syncing large files before performance degrades noticeably. A cloud-hosted Nextcloud instance on a server with 1 Gbps connectivity handles the same workload twenty times over.

If your team is distributed across multiple offices or has significant remote workers, the performance difference is not marginal — it is transformational. Hosting Nextcloud on proper high-availability cloud infrastructure eliminates the bottleneck entirely.

Collaboration Features

Synology Office provides basic document, spreadsheet, and slide editing within the DSM web interface. Nextcloud integrates with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice for full-featured real-time document collaboration.

For teams that need a genuine alternative to Google Drive or Microsoft 365, Nextcloud's collaboration stack provides a significantly more complete feature set than Synology Office. The ability to natively edit Microsoft Office formats without conversion is particularly important for organizations that exchange documents with external partners.

User Management and SSO

As organizations grow past 50 users, centralized identity management becomes essential. This is an area where Synology shows significant limitations compared to Nextcloud.

The lack of SAML and OpenID Connect support in Synology is a dealbreaker for many enterprises. If your organization uses Azure Active Directory, Okta, Google Workspace, or any modern identity provider, you cannot integrate Synology Drive into your single sign-on infrastructure. Nextcloud supports all major SSO protocols out of the box.

Mobile and Desktop Clients

Both platforms offer native clients across platforms, but with notable differences in functionality.

Synology Drive Client provides reliable background sync and on-demand file access. The mobile apps allow browsing, uploading, and basic sharing. However, the client ecosystem is relatively static — Synology updates these on their own schedule with limited community input.

Nextcloud's clients are open source, allowing organizations to audit the code and (if needed) customize functionality. The desktop client supports Virtual Files on all platforms, meaning files appear in your file manager but are downloaded only when accessed — reducing local storage requirements significantly. The mobile apps include auto-upload for photos, document scanning, and integration with Nextcloud Talk for messaging and calls.

Storage Scalability

This is perhaps the most fundamental difference between the two approaches and the core reason why teams eventually outgrow their NAS.

A common growth scenario: your 4-bay Synology NAS with 4x8 TB drives in SHR-1 gives you approximately 24 TB of usable storage. When that fills up, your options are to replace all drives with larger ones (requiring a lengthy rebuild process) or buy an expansion unit (which costs nearly as much as a new NAS). With cloud-hosted Nextcloud, you simply allocate additional storage — a process that takes minutes and requires no downtime. For architecture guidance on scaling Nextcloud to handle large deployments, see our guide on scaling Nextcloud to 1,000+ users.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Synology offers Hyper Backup, a capable backup solution that supports local, remote NAS, and cloud destinations (including C2 Storage, AWS S3, and Azure Blob). It is one of Synology's genuine strengths.

However, backups are only as good as your recovery strategy — and a NAS-based approach has inherent limitations:

• Single point of failure — If your NAS hardware fails (power supply, controller board), all services are down until replacement hardware arrives
• Recovery time — Restoring from cloud backup to a new NAS can take days for large datasets due to download bandwidth
• No geographic redundancy — Your NAS and its local backups are typically in the same physical location, vulnerable to the same disasters (fire, flood, theft)

Cloud-hosted Nextcloud with a proper backup and disaster recovery strategy overcomes all three limitations. Automated snapshots, off-site replication, and infrastructure-level redundancy mean that even a complete server failure results in minutes of downtime rather than days.

Compliance and Data Sovereignty

For organizations subject to regulatory requirements, compliance support is increasingly non-negotiable. This is where Nextcloud dramatically outperforms Synology.

QuickConnect, Synology's remote access relay, also raises compliance questions. When remote users access files via QuickConnect, traffic routes through Synology's relay infrastructure. While Synology states that file contents are encrypted end-to-end, the metadata routing through third-party servers may not satisfy strict data sovereignty requirements under regulations like GDPR or NIS2.

Signs You Have Outgrown Your NAS

Not every organization needs to migrate away from Synology. For small teams with primarily local access, a Synology NAS remains an excellent solution. However, if you recognize three or more of the following symptoms, it is time to evaluate a Synology alternative seriously.

The Outgrowth Checklist

1. Remote users complain about slow file access. When your team members working from home or traveling cannot reliably sync or access files at reasonable speeds, your office ISP's upload bandwidth has become a bottleneck. QuickConnect relay makes it worse, not better.
2. You are hitting storage capacity limits regularly. If you have already upgraded drives once or twice and are discussing expansion units or a new, larger NAS, you are on an expensive hardware treadmill. Each upgrade cycle costs thousands and requires planned downtime.
3. Your team needs SSO or advanced identity management. When the IT team gets requests to integrate with Azure AD, Okta, or Google Workspace, Synology's LDAP-only authentication becomes a significant limitation. Modern organizations expect single sign-on across all services.
4. Compliance audits are requesting specific certifications. If clients or regulators ask about SOC 2, HIPAA, NIS2, or ISO 27001 compliance for your file storage infrastructure, a NAS in a closet is a difficult sell — regardless of how well-configured it is.
5. You need real-time collaboration beyond basic file sharing. When teams start relying on Google Docs or Microsoft 365 because Synology Office cannot handle their document collaboration needs, you are paying for two systems and getting the benefits of neither.
6. Multiple office locations need fast file access. A NAS in your New York office serves New York well, but your London and Singapore teams experience unacceptable latency. Multi-site NAS deployments with Synology Drive ShareSync add complexity and cost without solving the fundamental problem.
7. Backup and disaster recovery gaps keep you up at night. If your NAS is the only copy of critical business data and restoring from backup would take days, your organization has a serious business continuity risk.
8. Your IT team spends too much time on NAS maintenance. Drive replacements, firmware updates, RAID rebuilds, expansion planning, and troubleshooting hardware issues consume time that could be spent on strategic initiatives.

If your organization checks three or more items on this list, you have outgrown your NAS. The question is not whether to migrate, but when and how.

Migration Path: Synology to Nextcloud

Migrating from Synology Drive to Nextcloud does not need to be a disruptive big-bang cutover. A phased approach minimizes risk and allows your team to adapt gradually.

Phase 1: Planning and Infrastructure Setup (Week 1-2)

Begin by auditing your current Synology environment:

• Total data volume and growth rate
• Number of active users and their typical access patterns
• Shared folder structure and permission model
• External sharing requirements (clients, partners)
• Integration needs (SSO, email, calendar)

Set up your Nextcloud instance on cloud infrastructure. For a production-grade deployment, follow our Nextcloud production setup guide which covers server sizing, database configuration, caching layers, and SSL setup.

Phase 2: Data Migration (Week 2-4)

There are three primary methods to migrate data from Synology to Nextcloud:

Method 1: WebDAV Transfer

Nextcloud supports WebDAV, and Synology can mount WebDAV shares. You can set up a Hyper Backup task or use Synology's Cloud Sync package to push data from the NAS directly to Nextcloud's WebDAV endpoint. This method is straightforward but can be slow for large datasets.

# Mount Nextcloud as WebDAV on a Linux workstation
sudo mount -t davfs https://your-nextcloud.example.com/remote.php/dav/files/admin/ /mnt/nextcloud

# rsync from Synology NAS share to Nextcloud mount
rsync -avz --progress /mnt/synology-share/ /mnt/nextcloud/migrated-data/

Method 2: Direct rsync via SSH

If you have SSH access to both the Synology NAS and the Nextcloud server, rsync is the most efficient transfer method. Enable SSH on the Synology, then run rsync directly to the Nextcloud data directory.

# From Nextcloud server, pull data from Synology NAS
rsync -avz --progress synology-user@nas-ip:/volume1/shared-folder/ /var/www/nextcloud/data/admin/files/migrated/

# After transfer, run Nextcloud file scan to register files
sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ files:scan --all

Method 3: Staged Migration with Parallel Operation

For large datasets (10+ TB), consider a staged approach: migrate department by department over several weeks while running both systems in parallel. This is the least disruptive approach and allows you to validate each batch before proceeding.

Phase 3: User Onboarding and Training (Week 3-5)

Nextcloud's web interface and desktop clients will feel familiar to Synology Drive users, but some training is worthwhile:

• Desktop client installation — Guide users through installing the Nextcloud desktop client and configuring their sync folders
• Mobile app setup — Walk through auto-upload configuration for photo backup and file access
• Sharing workflows — Demonstrate internal sharing, public links, and file request features
• Collaboration tools — Introduce Collabora Online for document editing, Nextcloud Talk for messaging, and Deck for project management

Phase 4: Transition and Decommission (Week 5-8)

Once all data is migrated and users are working in Nextcloud:

1. Set Synology Drive shares to read-only to prevent split-brain scenarios
2. Monitor Nextcloud usage and performance for two weeks
3. Repurpose the Synology NAS as a local backup target using Nextcloud's external storage feature
4. Alternatively, keep the NAS running as an archive for historical data that does not need active collaboration

Pro tip: Do not decommission your Synology NAS immediately. Repurpose it as a local backup endpoint. Configure Nextcloud to back up to the NAS via the External Storage app or use rsync from the Nextcloud server. This way, you retain the hardware investment while gaining all the benefits of cloud-hosted Nextcloud.

Total Cost of Ownership Comparison

One of the most common arguments for Synology is the low ongoing cost after the initial hardware purchase. While this is true for small deployments, the total cost of ownership picture changes significantly as you scale.

Synology NAS: 3-Year TCO for a 25-User Team

3-year Synology total: approximately $13,940

This estimate does not include the cost of Synology expansion units when you need more storage, NAS hardware replacement if the unit fails outside warranty, or the productivity cost of slow remote access for distributed team members.

Nextcloud on MassiveGRID: 3-Year TCO for a 25-User Team

3-year Nextcloud on MassiveGRID total: approximately $7,140

The cloud-hosted approach delivers 48% lower total cost over three years while providing dramatically better performance, redundancy, and scalability. And unlike the NAS approach, there are no surprise hardware replacement costs — if a drive fails in the cloud, it is the provider's problem, not yours.

Why MassiveGRID for Nextcloud Hosting

When migrating from Synology to Nextcloud, your choice of hosting infrastructure is as important as the software itself. Hosting Nextcloud on a consumer-grade VPS recreates many of the same problems you had with a NAS — just in a different location. MassiveGRID's cloud infrastructure is purpose-built for demanding workloads like Nextcloud.

Enterprise-Grade SSD Storage

All MassiveGRID servers use enterprise NVMe SSD storage with hardware RAID and automatic failover. Unlike a Synology NAS where a RAID rebuild after a drive failure can take 24+ hours (during which another drive failure means data loss), MassiveGRID's storage infrastructure handles drive failures transparently with no performance impact to your Nextcloud instance.

Global Data Center Locations

Deploy Nextcloud in New York, London, Frankfurt, or Singapore — placing your data center closest to the majority of your users. For organizations with globally distributed teams, multi-region deployments with Nextcloud's federated sharing provide local-speed access from anywhere.

Managed Backups and High Availability

MassiveGRID provides automated daily backups with configurable retention, stored in a separate geographic location from your primary server. For organizations requiring maximum uptime, high-availability configurations with automatic failover ensure your Nextcloud instance stays accessible even during hardware maintenance or unexpected failures.

Predictable, Scalable Pricing

Unlike the NAS approach where scaling requires large capital expenditures for new hardware, MassiveGRID's infrastructure scales on demand. Need more storage next month? Add a block storage volume. Experiencing growth in user count? Upgrade your server's CPU and RAM with minimal downtime. Bandwidth is included — no surprise overage charges.

Security and Compliance

MassiveGRID's infrastructure includes ISO-certified data centers, DDoS protection, and enterprise firewalls. For organizations subject to GDPR, NIS2, or industry-specific regulations, hosting with MassiveGRID provides the infrastructure-level compliance documentation that a NAS in your office cannot offer.

Making the Decision

Let us be clear: Synology Drive is a good product for its intended use case. If you are a small team of under ten people, primarily working from the same office, with straightforward file-sharing needs and no compliance requirements, a Synology NAS running Drive is a cost-effective and capable solution. It is simple to set up, reliable, and the DSM ecosystem provides useful additional features like surveillance and media streaming.

But if your organization is growing — if you are adding remote workers, opening new offices, facing compliance requirements, or hitting the ceiling on what your NAS hardware can deliver — then you have reached the inflection point where Nextcloud on proper cloud infrastructure becomes the clear choice.

The comparison comes down to this fundamental difference: Synology Drive is hardware-defined, while Nextcloud is software-defined. Hardware-defined systems have fixed capabilities that depreciate over time. Software-defined systems scale with your needs and improve with every update.

When to Stay with Synology

• Your team is under 10 people, mostly in one location
• Your data is under 20 TB and growing slowly
• Remote access is occasional, not mission-critical
• No compliance or regulatory requirements for file storage
• You value simplicity over flexibility

When to Move to Nextcloud

• Your team is growing past 15-20 people or is distributed
• Remote access performance is a recurring complaint
• You need SSO, advanced permissions, or compliance features
• Real-time document collaboration is important to your workflow
• You want to eliminate hardware procurement cycles and maintenance
• Data sovereignty and geographic redundancy are requirements

For organizations making the move, the migration path is well-established and the tooling is mature. Start with a parallel deployment, migrate data systematically, and repurpose your Synology hardware as a backup target. The result is a file sync and collaboration platform that grows with your organization instead of constraining it.

For detailed guidance on deploying Nextcloud in a production environment, explore our complete Nextcloud production setup guide and our analysis of Nextcloud self-hosting costs.