Cutter 8
$ 34 /month
- vCPU
- 4 × dedicated
- RAM
- 8 GB
- Storage
- 160 GB NVMe SSD
- Transfer
- 10 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 1 / /64 routed
Solution
VPS for Nextcloud: private file sync you actually control
Cutter 8 · $34/moHold 4 · $22/mo
Short answer
Nextcloud is IO-bound and storage-hungry rather than CPU-hungry. Two cores and 4 GB serve a family; a 20-person team wants 4 cores and 8 GB with Redis and PHP-FPM tuning. Storage is the real decision: the Hold line gives you 2–16 TB at a price per terabyte that makes consumer cloud subscriptions look expensive.
What you need
| Resource | What you actually need |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 cores for a household, 4 for a small team |
| RAM | 4 GB with Redis; 8 GB with full-text search |
| Disk | 2 TB and up on the Hold line |
| Stack | PHP 8.3, PostgreSQL or MariaDB, Redis, nginx |
Recommended plans
Hold 4
$ 22 /month
- vCPU
- 2 × shared
- RAM
- 4 GB
- Storage
- 2 TB Enterprise HDD
- Transfer
- 20 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 1 / /64 routed
Hold 8
$ 39 /month
- vCPU
- 4 × shared
- RAM
- 8 GB
- Storage
- 4 TB Enterprise HDD
- Transfer
- 30 TB
- IPv4 / IPv6
- 1 / /64 routed
Recommended locations
Location is usually the decision that matters most for this workload — either because latency dominates, or because jurisdiction does.
Why OnionVPS for this
- Terabyte-scale storage priced per terabyte instead of per user per month.
- Swiss and Icelandic hosting places your files under statutory correspondence protection.
- Server-side encryption plus LUKS full-disk encryption on the Bastion line, keyed at boot by you.
- No provider-side scanning of file contents, ever — we neither look nor keep the ability to.
How to set it up
-
Deploy a Hold 2 in a privacy jurisdiction
Two terabytes is the sensible starting size.
-
Install Nextcloud with PostgreSQL and Redis
Redis for file locking is not optional at any real scale.
-
Tune PHP-FPM and OPcache
Raise memory_limit to 1 GB and increase the OPcache interned strings buffer.
-
Enable server-side encryption if you want it
It costs performance; full-disk encryption plus TLS is enough for most threat models.
-
Set up backups to a second jurisdiction
Nightly encrypted backups to another region, restic or Borg.
Frequently asked questions
How much storage does Nextcloud need per user?
Budget 50–100 GB per active user for documents and photos, more if they sync video. Storage grows faster than you expect; the Hold line is priced so that over-provisioning is cheap.
Is self-hosted Nextcloud more private than a commercial cloud?
It removes the provider's ability to read, scan or hand over your files, which no commercial service can offer. In exchange you own patching and backups.
Which database should I use?
PostgreSQL. Nextcloud supports MariaDB, but Postgres handles concurrent writes better and is what large installations run.