TL;DR: co-editing in the browser with several people at once requires neither Microsoft 365 nor Google. Collabora Online and OnlyOffice Docs do it on your own server, plugged into Nextcloud. Collabora starts from the LibreOffice engine and speaks open formats first. OnlyOffice has its own engine, built for .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, with an interface modelled on Office. Neither is free for production in the way people tend to imagine, but at Collabora the editing component comes to about $1,150 CAD a year for 20 people. 2026 added a third path, Euro-Office, born of a split between Nextcloud and OnlyOffice. The choice is made with your real documents, not with a spec sheet.
In this article
- Co-editing, the real reason people stay with Microsoft: the document has to live where the editing happens, and with Microsoft 365 it lives at Microsoft.
- Two engines, three ways to get them: Collabora starts from the LibreOffice engine, OnlyOffice has its own, and Euro-Office is a fork of it.
- Collabora and OnlyOffice: the forces at play: formats, interface, licence, price and macros side by side, with VBA macros as the real tipping point.
- Free, but not for the same thing: CODE is not for production, and the editing component costs about $1,150 CAD a year for 20 people.
- Documents that stay in Quebec, and Law 25 is better for it: section 17 requires an assessment before any communication outside Quebec, which a Quebec server avoids.
- 2026: OnlyOffice and Nextcloud part ways: a fork, a split and no lawsuit, but the OnlyOffice connector for Nextcloud is still maintained.
- Where it pinches: server sizing, VBA macros, elaborate workbooks, fonts and offline work all call for testing.
- The ten-document test, to decide: ten files that hurt, three people at once, and the list of what breaks decides.
- Where to start this week: six steps over two weeks, from the Microsoft 365 invoice to the decision.
- At Blue Fox: we install Collabora or OnlyOffice in Quebec and run the ten-document test with you.
"So how would we co-edit, then?" When an SMB considers leaving Microsoft 365, the first objection is rarely about email or the calendar. It is about the budget workbook three people edit at the same time the night before the board meeting, or the proposal the director reviews while the project lead is still finishing it.
That habit has a price, and the price went up. Since July 1, 2026, Microsoft 365 Business Standard costs $19.00 CAD per user per month in Canada, up from $17.00 in the spring, and Business Basic went from $8.10 to $9.50. We have already done the full five-year math of Microsoft 365 against a libre stack. Here we stop on the piece that holds teams back the most, editing together in the browser, and on the two libre suites that do it on your premises: Collabora Online and OnlyOffice Docs.
For the leadership team that has to decide, the essentials fit on one printable page: the Collabora or OnlyOffice decision sheet for managers, as a PDF. It covers the prices, five questions to ask your team, the ten-document test and how to read its result.
Co-editing, the real reason people stay with Microsoft
File storage, calendars and contacts have had proven replacements for a long time, and Nextcloud brings them together in a single interface. What makes people hesitate is the moment four people have the same document open and watch each other's cursors move.
That comfort rests on a condition people forget: for several people to edit together, the document has to live where the editing happens. With Microsoft 365, it lives at Microsoft. With Collabora or OnlyOffice, it lives on your server, and the editing engine runs right next to it. These suites do not replace Word on the desktop. They replace Word in the browser, plugged into your file manager.
For the person doing the work, the change is smaller than they fear. They click a file in Nextcloud, it opens in a tab, the colleagues who are there show up, and comments and track changes are all present. They share a link with an outside partner without asking them to create an account. And the "proposal_v4_final_REAL.docx" attachment disappears from inboxes, which is not the least of the gains.
Two engines, three ways to get them
Collabora Online is developed by Collabora Productivity, a company registered in England and based in Cambridge. It is built on the LibreOffice engine, the most widely used libre desktop suite, which we covered in our guide to free alternatives to Microsoft Office. Its format of choice is ODF (.odt, .ods, .odp), the open format, but it opens and saves Microsoft files every day.
OnlyOffice Docs is developed by Ascensio System SIA, a company registered in Riga, Latvia. It wrote its own engine and made a structuring choice: to work natively in Microsoft's formats, the ones called Office Open XML (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). Its interface follows Office very closely, to the point that a Word regular finds their way around in a few minutes.
The third path appeared in 2026. Euro-Office is a fork of OnlyOffice: same engine, same interface, but different governance, carried by a coalition of European companies gathered around Nextcloud and IONOS. We come back to it below, because its story says something useful about choosing a tool.
What this changes for you: a team that lives in Word and Excel, mostly exchanges with clients on Office and has never opened LibreOffice will feel at home faster in OnlyOffice or Euro-Office. An organization that already uses LibreOffice on its computers, or receives documents in ODF, will find the same rendering and the same menus in Collabora.
Collabora and OnlyOffice: the forces at play
| Criterion | Collabora Online | OnlyOffice Docs |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | LibreOffice's | Its own |
| Working format | ODF first, Microsoft formats supported | Microsoft formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) first |
| Interface | Close to LibreOffice | Modelled on Microsoft Office |
| Code licence | MPL 2.0 | AGPL v3, with attribution terms |
| No-cost version | CODE, "not recommended for production" | Community: no technical cap since 9.4.0, "up to 20" users recommended, no support |
| Paid offer | €3 per user per month, up to 99 users | From US$1,500 a year for 50 simultaneous connections |
| Macros | Disabled by default, Basic and Python if the administrator allows them | JavaScript only, VBA macros do not run |
| Free desktop software | LibreOffice, which shares the same engine | OnlyOffice Desktop Editors, under AGPL v3 |
| In Nextcloud | The "Nextcloud Office (Collabora)" app | A connector maintained by OnlyOffice, and Euro-Office as an option |
Two rows deserve a closer look. Macros first: if your accounting or your reports rely on VBA macros written ten years ago, neither suite will run them as they are. OnlyOffice only reads its own JavaScript macros, and Collabora keeps macros disabled until the administrator allows them. That, more than layout, is often where the feasibility of a migration is decided. The Nextcloud row next: it changed this year, and it gets a section of its own.
Free, but not for the same thing
Both suites are libre: their source code is published and you have the right to run it. That does not mean the ready-to-install version is offered for production, and that is where the two vendors differ.
At Collabora, the free version is called CODE. The vendor describes it as perfect for testing, home use or small teams, but "not recommended for production environments." The versions meant for production come with the subscription, which also brings fixes and support. The public price list: €3 per user per month up to 99 users, then a negotiated price beyond that.
At OnlyOffice, the Community edition is under AGPL v3. Until spring 2026, it blocked beyond 20 documents open at the same time. Version 9.4.0, released in May, removed that cap, and the repository now speaks of "up to 20" recommended users: advice, not a lock. This edition comes without support. The Enterprise edition is sold by simultaneous connections, meaning browser tabs open for editing at the same moment, from US$1,500 a year for 50 connections, or as a lifetime licence.
For a team of 20 people, here is the order of magnitude of the editing component alone, per year and before taxes, at the Bank of Canada rate of October 2, 2026:
| Option | Published price | Per year, 20 people |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Word, Excel and PowerPoint in web and mobile versions only) | $9.50 CAD per user per month | $2,280 CAD |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | $19.00 CAD per user per month | $4,560 CAD |
| OnlyOffice Docs Enterprise | US$1,500 a year for 50 connections | About $2,140 CAD |
| Collabora Online Business | €3 per user per month | About $1,150 CAD |
The comparison is not symmetrical. Microsoft 365 includes email, Teams and storage, while the Collabora or OnlyOffice row only pays for editing. You have to add the server, its hosting and support, which weigh more than the licence, and those are exactly the costs our five-year comparison adds up. The table shows something else: with the libre suites, editing is a separate component, at a known price, that you can swap without moving your files.
Documents that stay in Quebec, and Law 25 is better for it
Law 25 amended Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector. Its section 17 is short and precise: before communicating personal information outside Quebec, the enterprise must conduct a privacy impact assessment. It takes into account the sensitivity of the information, the purpose, the protection measures and the legal framework of the place where it is going, and the communication must be the subject of a written agreement. The same rule applies when you entrust someone outside Quebec with keeping that information on your behalf.
An employee file, a proposal with a client's contact details, a tracking sheet of a non-profit's service users: all of them contain personal information, and all of them go through the office suite. When that suite runs at a provider whose servers are outside Quebec, the documents co-edited there fall within the scope of section 17. When it runs on a server hosted in Quebec, next to your files, the question no longer arises for that component.
It does not exempt you from the rest of Law 25: the person in charge, the policy, access management. But it takes out of the equation an assessment you would otherwise have to document, defend and redo every time the provider changes its terms. And the day a foreign provider changes course, as we described in what is left standing in an SMB the day the American cloud closes, your documents stay where they are.
2026: OnlyOffice and Nextcloud part ways
Nextcloud and OnlyOffice had been working together since 2018. On March 27, 2026, in Berlin, a coalition led by Nextcloud and IONOS announced Euro-Office, a fork of OnlyOffice. It said existing solutions carried legal risks around licensing and trademarks, or were developed without transparent and open governance. On March 30, OnlyOffice accused the project of using its technology in violation of its licensing terms. On March 31, it suspended its partnership with Nextcloud, while writing that it would continue to support and develop its connector for Nextcloud.
The heart of the dispute fits in one clause. OnlyOffice added to the AGPL an obligation to keep its logo. On April 15, the Free Software Foundation took a position: that obligation is a further restriction of the licence, and it can be removed. In May, OnlyOffice replaced the logo clause with attribution requirements. In late May, it said it had not entered into any agreement with Euro-Office. On June 9, the day of Euro-Office's first stable release, Nextcloud's founder said the opposite, that the dispute was settled by adding source and brand notices. No lawsuit has been made public.
The background weighed in too. According to Computerworld, Nextcloud's founder cited customer concerns about the vendor's Russian roots, and The Register noted many signs that the product was developed in Russia. OnlyOffice replies that its intellectual property belongs to a Latvian company, that its Russian business was separated in 2019 and that it left that market. Each organization will weigh these elements according to its sector. An installation on your premises does not send your documents to the vendor: the question is about where the code you run comes from and who will maintain it.
What an SMB should take from this, without drama:
- Nothing stopped working. The OnlyOffice connector for Nextcloud is still maintained by its vendor, and its version 10.2.1, released on September 25, 2026, supports recent versions of Nextcloud.
- Nextcloud now offers a choice. Since Nextcloud Hub 26, Euro-Office is offered next to Collabora, at the administrator's choice, and the OnlyOffice connector can still be installed.
- Euro-Office is young. Its first stable release dates from June, four maintenance releases have followed, and its desktop software was still announced for "the next few weeks" in mid-September. It is promising, and we are waiting for it to prove itself before recommending it by default.
- The lesson lies elsewhere. An organization that had chosen OnlyOffice in Nextcloud lost nothing this year, because its files were on its own premises, in formats all these suites read. That is the real criterion: being able to change editing engines without moving your documents.
Where it pinches
An online office suite is a demanding component. The server has to be sized for the number of people editing at the same moment, not the number of accounts, and a cramped suite shows right away: lagging keystrokes, jumping cursors. It is a real hosting cost, to plan from the start.
Compatibility is excellent for the vast majority of everyday documents, and imperfect at the edges. VBA macros do not run, as we saw. Very elaborate Excel workbooks, with connections to external data or recent Microsoft-specific functions, can hold surprises. Word templates built on Microsoft fonts shift if those fonts are not installed on the server. None of this is a deal-breaker, but all of it is discovered by testing, not by reading a spec sheet.
Offline work goes through desktop software: LibreOffice on the Collabora side, OnlyOffice Desktop Editors on the OnlyOffice side, both free. So you have to decide who needs it and install it, whereas Microsoft 365 Business Standard supplied its desktop apps as a matter of course.
Finally, integration with the rest of the Microsoft world goes away: no direct opening from Teams, no Outlook attachment edited in place. If your organization keeps Microsoft 365 for email, libre co-editing becomes a second habit to establish, and that is an argument against a half-migration. For documents so sensitive that not even the host should be able to read them, another family of tools exists: CryptPad, which encrypts documents end to end, at the cost of more modest office features.
The ten-document test, to decide
You do not choose an office suite from a demo. You choose it from the documents that hurt. The test we suggest takes half a day and settles the question almost every time.
The ten-document test, before signing anything:
- Pick ten real files that cause trouble: the budget workbook, the proposal template with its styles, the presentation you hand to clients, the form that contains macros.
- Open each one in Collabora and in OnlyOffice, on a trial instance.
- Have three people edit them at the same time, with track changes and comments.
- Save them in Microsoft format and reopen them in Office, as a client or partner would.
- Note what breaks, what shifts and what disappears. The list decides for you.
A few markers help read the result. If the list leans toward complex Microsoft files and your team is attached to its Office reflexes, OnlyOffice starts with a head start, and Euro-Office offers the same engine under different governance. If you already work in LibreOffice or receive documents in ODF, Collabora is the obvious pick. And if both pass your test, choose by pricing model: a predictable per-user subscription at Collabora, or simultaneous connections at OnlyOffice, which favour teams where few people edit at the same time.
Nothing forces you to choose forever. In Nextcloud, the editing engine can be changed without moving a single file. That is precisely what makes the choice less risky than it looks.
Where to start this week
The ten-document test takes a few hours to prepare, shared between management and whoever looks after IT. Here is an order that fits in two weeks.
- Today, 15 minutes. Open the Microsoft 365 invoice and count the licences by plan. For each one, note whether the person mostly uses the desktop apps or editing in the browser.
- This week, one hour. Ask the team how many people edit at the same time at busy moments: the day before a board meeting, a proposal deadline, month-end. That number sizes the server and, at OnlyOffice, sets the price.
- This week, one hour. List the files with macros (.xlsm, .docm) and what they do. If there are any, name who can rewrite them or do without them.
- Before the test. Pick the ten documents and the three people who will edit them together, including at least one who doubts the change.
- Within two weeks, half a day. Run the test on a trial instance and record the result in a shared grid: document, suite, what breaks.
- On decision day. Pick an engine, write down why in three lines and put a review date one year out in the calendar.
For the meeting where the decision gets made, bring the decision sheet for managers, as a PDF: the prices, the five questions and how to read the test fit on one page.
At Blue Fox
We install Collabora or OnlyOffice next to your Nextcloud, on a server hosted in Quebec, and we run the ten-document test with you before recommending anything. We also take care of what makes the switch succeed: fonts, templates, and training for the people who edit the most.
If you pay for Microsoft 365 mostly to co-edit, let's talk about your documents. We start with the ones that hurt.
Sources
- Collabora Online, subscriptions: €3 per user per month up to 99 users, a negotiated price beyond that, and CODE for testing and home use.
- Collabora Online, the CODE development edition: perfect for testing, home use or small teams, but not recommended for production.
- Collabora, end-user licence and subscription agreement: MPL 2.0 for the source code, the licence tied to the subscription, and the Cambridge headquarters.
- Collabora, how to use and manage macros: macro execution disabled by default, Basic and Python when the administrator allows them.
- ONLYOFFICE Docs, the official repository: the AGPL v3 licence, the attribution terms, the Riga headquarters and the "up to 20" recommended users for the Community edition.
- ONLYOFFICE Docs, the changelog: removal of the limit of 20 simultaneously opened documents in version 9.4.0.
- ONLYOFFICE, Docs Enterprise prices: from US$1,500 for 50 simultaneous connections, as a one-year or lifetime licence.
- ONLYOFFICE, licence and trademark policy (May 2026): the new attribution requirements and the free Desktop Editors.
- ONLYOFFICE, converting VBA macros: JavaScript macros, incompatible with Microsoft's VBA macros.
- Nextcloud, the launch of Euro-Office (March 27, 2026): the coalition, the Berlin event and the stated reasons.
- ONLYOFFICE, licence violations flagged in Euro-Office (March 30, 2026): the vendor's position.
- ONLYOFFICE, partnership with Nextcloud suspended (March 31, 2026): a relationship built since 2018, and the commitment to keep developing the connector.
- Free Software Foundation, the AGPL is not a tool for taking freedom away (April 15, 2026): the logo obligation seen as a further restriction.
- Computerworld, Euro-Office available on June 9 (May 29, 2026): OnlyOffice saying it has not entered into any agreement with the project.
- heise, the first version of Euro-Office (June 9, 2026): the dispute declared settled by Nextcloud's founder.
- Nextcloud Office: Euro-Office and Collabora Online offered as a choice in Nextcloud.
- Nextcloud, Hub 26 Summer (September 16, 2026): the Euro-Office desktop software announced for the next few weeks.
- Euro-Office, published releases: 9.3.1 on June 9, 2026, then four maintenance releases through late August.
- Nextcloud app store, the ONLYOFFICE connector: version 10.2.1 of September 25, 2026 and the supported Nextcloud versions.
- Computerworld, Nextcloud and OnlyOffice part ways (March 31, 2026): the customer concerns cited by Nextcloud's founder.
- The Register, forking frenzy after Euro-Office (April 2, 2026): a Latvian headquarters and signs of development in Russia.
- ONLYOFFICE, ONLYFacts about ONLYOFFICE (April 2026): intellectual property held in Latvia and the separation of the Russian business in 2019.
- Microsoft, Microsoft 365 business plans in Canada: Business Basic at $9.50 CAD and Business Standard at $19.00 CAD per user per month, paid yearly.
- Microsoft, the pricing update announcement (December 4, 2025): the changes taking effect on July 1, 2026.
- LégisQuébec, Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector: section 17 on communication outside Quebec.
- Bank of Canada, daily exchange rates: $1.6037 CAD per euro and $1.4246 CAD per US dollar on October 2, 2026.