Hacker News Reader

Comment by nocchedure | Hacker News Reader

I’m heavily invested in the Google ecosystem and nothing would make me happier than switching to a privacy-focused European alternative.

However, the value of the Google Workspace* mid-tier (approx. 15€) is hard to beat, I think.

I get:

- granular domain \ email controls (blocklists, routing rules, etc.)

- 2tb of google drive space

- and now Gemini, which is quite nice

It’s 2025, and I’m still finding it impossible to leave :(

* note: I use Google Workspace as a personal account, with just one (my) user, because that gives me access to the domain and management tools listed above

View on HN

Infomanikak “kSuite bussiness” plan 79eur year. 5 email adresses. 3TB drive (their kDrive is legit better than google drive). WebDav/CardDav/CalDav. Their kMeet conferencing is solid.

Recently they got some Euria AI - i havent tried it i bet it's bad. Rest though i really like.

I don't want to be _that_ guy pushing Infomaniak on each thread about email, but, yeah, it allowed me to get out of Google (with Kagi) with quite a lot of success.

Regarding Euria, I don't use it much since I have Kagi Assistant and other things via work, but I was quite surprised by the results given its cost.

The only annoying thing I saw was that it kept answering in French even though I prompted in English.

I really want to get my entire company out of Google and into Infomaniak but persuading anyone to use their docs suite is going to be impossible, it's awful.

Maybe nextcloud workspace, perhaps with Onlyoffice plug in? Iirc you can get managed nextcloud from ionos

We used to have a self-hosted Nextcloud and everyone hated the docs in it. We're a design company, with everyone on Macs, so something this ugly, clunky and hard to use [0] is never going to get traction.

[0] https://nextcloud.com/c/uploads/2025/09/Nextcloud-Hub-25-Aut...

Ok but that clearly competes with microsoft Office. I would assume majority of office users prefer that look and feature set.

Even google docs are not really pretty. Maybe it's opportunity to get something like Craft, Outline or Notion and thus leaving that docs requirement as part of the suite.

That's what infomaniak already does. Their “suite” is fors class support of OnlyOffice WebDav.

They don't have anything of their own right? They just support Only Office through WebDav. That's like what Nextcloud does.

Unfortunately I don't think there ever will be google docs alternative that people will easily accept because it's almost impossible to build business based on competing with very complex/expensive product that google provides for free. It's clearly their loss leader and moat.

It’s far from impossible, you just have to prioritize your privacy at more than a few bucks a month.

Or in this case have a look at the Google Graveyard and/or those many stories of users that lost access to their Google account without any way to contact an actual person that could help them.

If it was just privacy it would be an easy sell but there is nothing close to a fully functional alternative then Microsoft.

Nothing would make parent happier, but they've placed a very small price on their happiness.

I think this is a very privileged statement when looking at affordability of many countries. For example 40 euros a month is out of reach for much of Albania.

You can get all the domain stuff for less than 1 € from any competent hoster, e.g. netcup. For cloud drive, if you really want to put your own files on someone else's server, there are tons of cheaper options, e.g. 2 TB for 10 €/month from strato. Gemini is of course something that no one needs.

Many people view their personal emails being slurped up by a Google AI model as a pretty big negative.

If you pay for Workspace (like he says he does) your data is your own, just like for any SaaS product.

Then how is Gemini of any use?

I think it's reasonable to doubt this, and/or wonder how long until they decide to change this, and/or make exceptions like "to make your search experience better, Gemini now indexes your metadata (but only metadata so that's okay)"

Not really though. The data is also Google's and being in the US it's also accessible to other entities.

How do people get more than 2tb of backup/cloud storage? it seems expensive to pay 20+ per month for this. 2tb+ should be very common these days?

Does this include Gemini CLI the terminal vibe coding?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com