Replace Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive with a private file sharing platform that lives in your own cloud or on-prem. Real compliance, real data residency, no per-seat lock-in — managed end-to-end by Chams.
SaaS file sharing is great until it isn't. Here's where it usually breaks down for organizations past 50 or so users, and why a Dropbox replacement enterprise teams actually trust often means going self-hosted.
Dropbox Business runs $15–25 per user per month. At 200 users that's $36k–60k a year, every year. Costs scale with headcount even when storage usage doesn't.
HIPAA BAAs come with fine print. GDPR data residency isn't always honored. Government and defense contracts often disqualify shared multi-tenant SaaS outright.
Audit trails, share links, and admin logs all live in their system. When you need to move, exporting clean evidence for compliance reviews is painful.
Dropbox caps transfer speeds and chunks uploads in ways that punish video, CAD, scientific datasets, and other large-file workflows.
Read the fine print on Advanced and Enterprise plans — storage tops out, and overages are billed separately. True unlimited only happens on hardware you control.
EU GDPR rules, healthcare regulators, and government clients increasingly require data to stay in a specific country or jurisdiction — not "the cloud."
The strongest self hosted Dropbox alternative for 95% of organizations is Nextcloud. We deploy and run it on your infrastructure as Nextcloud managed hosting — you get the platform, we handle the operations.
Open source, 800,000+ deployments worldwide, used by governments, hospitals, and Fortune 500s. Same UX as Dropbox — folders, sharing, desktop sync, mobile apps, link sharing — but the data lives entirely on your infrastructure. Mature, battle-tested, with a real plugin ecosystem for office docs, calendar, contacts, chat, and video calls.
Faster sync engine than Nextcloud, leaner footprint, and excellent block-level deduplication. A great pick if your primary workload is heavy file sync across many endpoints and you don't need the full Nextcloud Hub feature set.
For smaller teams or specialized workflows where you want true device-to-device sync with no central server at all. Lightweight, open source, and a fit for technical teams or air-gapped scenarios.
When you need pure object storage rather than a Dropbox-style UX — backups, machine learning pipelines, application storage. We deploy MinIO or Ceph to give you S3-compatible storage on your own hardware.
Everything users expect from Dropbox — and a lot they didn't know they needed. Real own your data file sharing without giving up the polish.
The real reason most regulated organizations move to a private cloud storage alternative isn't cost — it's audit pressure.
No shared BAA ambiguity. You are the data controller and the host, so PHI never leaves infrastructure you control. Audit logs, access controls, and encryption keys all live with you. Easier to defend in a real audit.
Pin storage to the exact EU region (or specific member state) you choose. No SCCs to argue about, no Schrems III surprises, no quiet replication to a US data center.
You own the audit trail end-to-end. Logs feed your SIEM, retention rules match your policy, and evidence collection takes minutes instead of waiting on a vendor portal.
Deploy to AWS GovCloud or Azure Government for US-only data and US-person access. For DoD or ITAR workloads, run on FIPS 140-2 validated infrastructure inside your own boundary.
Self-hosting has real upfront cost — but it stops growing with headcount. Here's roughly how the math plays out at three common scales.
Light file sharing, modest storage
Full team file sharing + collaboration
Multi-region, compliance-driven
Numbers above are infrastructure only. Our managed service fees are quoted separately based on user count, SLA, and support tier. See Private Cloud Storage for the full service overview.
A four-step process built around zero data loss and minimal user disruption. Most cutovers happen on a Friday evening with no Monday surprises.
Map current data volume, user count, share-link usage, external collaborator patterns, and integrations. Identify edge cases (shared team folders, locked files) before they become surprises.
Provision Nextcloud on your chosen infrastructure — on-prem, your cloud account, or one we manage. Hardened config, SSO connected, MFA enforced, backups verified before any user data lands.
Automated migration via rclone and the Dropbox API preserves folder structure, file versions, and metadata. Active share links are mapped to new Nextcloud links and reissued to recipients.
User training sessions, desktop and mobile app rollout, DNS or SSO switchover, and Dropbox decommission. We stay on hand for the first two weeks of live use to handle any escalations.
Honest answers to what teams ask before committing to self hosted file sharing.
Tell us your current setup and user count. We'll come back with a sizing, a migration plan, and an honest answer on whether self-hosting actually saves you money.
Tell us about your project. We'll respond within 24 hours.