Google Workspace is usually not one product but four: Drive for files, Gmail for email, Docs for editing, and Calendar holding the whole thing together. A migration that only mentions files is quietly leaving most of the estate behind, so this guide covers the whole move honestly: Drive to a private Nextcloud as the core, document editing to Collabora Online inside it, calendars and contacts to Nextcloud's built-in apps, and email to our hosted mail platform, mailcow, as a workstream of its own. If you are still weighing the products rather than planning a move, start with the comparison: Nextcloud vs Google Drive.
The headline: migration is included in the managed service, with no separate fee. We transfer files and folder structures, map teams and permissions to groups, connect single sign-on, and verify the result against the source, and Workspace stays live and untouched until you confirm the move. What follows is the detail, including the parts that do not carry over.
Drive to Nextcloud: what moves and what does not
Moves cleanly: files and folder structures. The bulk of the estate is ordinary files in folders, and they transfer with the tree intact. Shared drives are owned by the organisation, so they map naturally onto Nextcloud group folders with permissions reproduced deliberately and reviewed with you.
Needs care: "shared with me". Files shared with your users by people outside the organisation are not yours; they belong to their owners and live in the owner's Drive. They are not part of an export of your data, so discovery includes deciding, per relationship, whether a copy belongs in the new estate or whether the share simply continues from the other side.
Needs care: Google-native documents. Docs, Sheets and Slides are not files in the ordinary sense; they exist in Google's own formats and must be exported to standard Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) to live anywhere else. Converted documents remain editable, collaboratively and in real time, through Collabora Online in Nextcloud. Most convert cleanly; spreadsheets leaning on Apps Script or Google-only functions need rework, and we flag those early with options rather than leaving them to be discovered in use.
Does not carry: version history and comments. Drive keeps a revision history for files; no export path brings it along, on this platform or any other we know of. What moves is the current version of each file, and Nextcloud versions everything from the day it arrives. Comment threads on Google-native documents are similar: depending on the export route some open comments survive conversion and some do not, and resolved threads with their history stay in Google. We treat discussion history as staying behind and say so before the move.
Does not carry: shared links. Links you have sent out point at google.com and cannot be migrated. We inventory active external shares during discovery so reissuing them from Nextcloud is a checklist with named owners, not a scramble.
Email: Gmail to hosted mail
Email is the workstream with the least room for improvisation, because it has a hard cutover: the moment your MX records change, mail arrives at the new platform whether it is ready or not. So it is done in the safe order.
Mailboxes are synchronised over IMAP while Gmail remains live and untouched; your team notices nothing. Mail and folder structure carry over. One Gmail-specific behaviour is worth knowing in advance: Gmail does not really have folders, it has labels, and over IMAP it presents each label as a folder, so a message carrying three labels appears in three places. Migration tooling deduplicates so each message is copied once, but the destination has folders rather than labels: your mail arrives intact, the label model does not, and a message ends up filed in one folder rather than several. Gmail filters and settings do not transfer either; rules are re-created on the new platform.
When the mailboxes are synchronised and verified, MX records are switched, and a final synchronisation pass catches anything delivered to Gmail during the changeover. What has no migration path is Google Chat: chat history is not email, and while it can be exported as an archive for the record, it does not become a mailbox on any platform. We say that plainly up front. The mail service itself, with webmail, antispam and device sync, is described on the mailcow page.
Calendars and contacts
Google Calendar exports calendars as standard ICS files and Google Contacts exports vCards; Nextcloud's built-in Calendar and Contacts apps import both, then serve them to phones and desktop clients over the open CalDAV and CardDAV standards. Events, recurring appointments and address books carry over; sharing arrangements between colleagues are re-established on the new platform rather than migrated, and meeting-room and resource booking is set up fresh. Invitations already sitting in people's calendars keep their history; future scheduling simply happens on the new system.
How we run the migration
In outcome terms, because the outcomes are what you can hold us to:
- Discovery and scoping. We inventory the estate: Drive volume, shared drives, native-document count, Apps Script dependencies, mailbox sizes, external shares and connected tools. You get a written plan.
- Trial sync of a pilot subset. A representative slice of Drive moves first, native documents included, and a pilot group does real work on Nextcloud: syncing, sharing, editing converted spreadsheets. Doubts get answered with evidence.
- Full transfer, source untouched. The transfer reads from Workspace and writes to the new platform. Nothing at the source is altered or deleted at any point.
- Permission and group mapping. Shared drives and folder access become Nextcloud groups and permissions, reviewed with you before anyone relies on them.
- Single sign-on. Nextcloud and mail connect to your identity realm so nobody needs new credentials, and a leaver loses everything in one action.
- Verification against the source. File counts and sizes against Drive, spot-check opens of converted documents, mailbox counts against Gmail, shared with you rather than asserted.
- Switchover. Sync clients roll over when you confirm; the MX change is scheduled as its own deliberate event, not a side effect.
- Decommission on your say-so. The Workspace subscription stays intact until you decide to close it. You close it, not us.
Doing it yourself instead
The standard tooling exists and is worth knowing about even if we run the move, because it is what makes the exercise verifiable rather than magical.
Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) exports a user's data with native documents converted to chosen formats. The caveat its users discover late: it only exports files the user owns, so "shared with me" content is absent, and assembling a whole company from per-user archives is genuinely awkward.
The Workspace admin Data Export tool (Google's documentation) exports an organisation's data in one operation, run by a super administrator. At the time of writing it lands in a Google Cloud Storage bucket, becomes available no earlier than about 48 hours after starting, and can take days for large estates; it is an export, not a migration, so everything still has to be moved and mapped afterwards.
rclone (Drive backend documentation) copies Drive to Nextcloud directly and exports native documents to Office formats on the way (its default export formats include .docx, .xlsx and .pptx), with flags for shared drives and "shared with me". Its documentation is candid that Drive's rate limiting caps transfers at roughly a couple of files per second, which matters for estates with very many small files.
imapsync (imapsync.github.io) is the standard open source tool for mailbox moves, with a Gmail mode that handles the labels-as-folders duplication described above.
All of these move data. None of them maps permissions to groups, connects single sign-on, reissues shares, sequences the MX cutover or verifies the result against the source; that is most of what a migration actually is, and it is manual whichever route you take.
How to prepare
- Audit what is actually used. Years of Workspace accumulate dead weight; knowing which drives and mailboxes are live changes the shape of the move.
- Clean up before, not after. Deleting in Drive is cheaper than migrating, converting and then deleting.
- Decide the folder and team structure you want, not the one that grew. The move is a free chance to fix it.
- List external shares to reissue, with an owner for each relationship.
- Count your native documents and Apps Script dependencies; they set the conversion workload and the rework list.
- Confirm who controls your DNS, because the MX cutover needs it on the day.
How long it takes
Honestly: it depends, and a firm duration quoted before discovery is a guess. A pilot group is typically working on the new platform within days. The full Drive transfer is governed by data volume and Google's rate limits; mailbox synchronisation runs alongside without disturbing anyone; the MX cutover is scheduled deliberately with your team. We estimate after discovery and do not commit to durations we cannot control.
What you get at the end
Your files, mail, calendars and documents on hardware we own in a UK datacentre, operated by a UK company with two named engineers, under a UK GDPR Article 28 data processing agreement, with an audit trail of who accessed what. When a client, insurer or regulator asks where the data lives, the answer is one sentence, and it is yours rather than a chain of another company's paperwork.
The ongoing service is the one that ran the migration: deployment, upgrades, security patching, nightly encrypted backups, monitoring, single sign-on and support from the engineers who run the platform, at a flat monthly fee per resource profile instead of a per-seat bill that rises with every hire. What is included is on the Nextcloud and mailcow pages; current figures are on the pricing page. And if discovery shows your team is small and Gmail-centred enough that Workspace remains the better deal, we will tell you so.
Frequently asked questions
Does Google Workspace stay live during the migration?
Yes. The transfer reads from Workspace and writes to the new platform; nothing at the source is changed or deleted. Your team keeps working in Workspace until the switchover, mail keeps arriving at Gmail until the MX records move, and the old subscription stays intact until you confirm and choose to close it.
What happens to our Google Docs, Sheets and Slides?
They are exported to standard Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) during the transfer and remain editable in Nextcloud through Collabora Online, including real-time collaboration. Most documents convert cleanly. Spreadsheets that depend on Apps Script or Google-only functions need rework, and we flag those during discovery rather than leaving you to find out later.
What about email?
Email moves to a hosted mail platform as its own workstream: mailboxes are synchronised over IMAP while Gmail stays live, then MX records are switched and a final pass catches anything delivered during the changeover. Mail and folder structure carry over; Gmail labels behave as folders over IMAP, so a message with several labels lands in one folder rather than keeping the label model. See our mailcow page for the mail service itself.
What does not carry over from Workspace?
Version history stays behind on every platform we know of: what moves is the current version of each file. Comment threads on Google-native documents do not reliably survive conversion, so treat discussion history as staying in Google. Shared links point at google.com and need reissuing from the new platform. And Google Chat history is not email and has no live migration path; it can be exported as an archive for the record, but it does not become a mailbox.
How long does a Workspace migration take?
A pilot group is typically working on the new platform within days. The full Drive transfer depends on data volume and Google's own rate limits, and the mail cutover is a scheduled event we plan with you rather than a side effect. We give an estimate after discovery instead of promising durations up front.
What does the migration cost?
Nothing on top. Migration is included in the managed service, which is a flat monthly fee per resource profile rather than a per-user charge. Current figures are on the pricing page.
Can we do it ourselves?
Yes. Google Takeout exports a user's own files, the Workspace admin Data Export tool exports an organisation, rclone can copy Drive to Nextcloud and convert native documents on the way, and imapsync is the standard open source tool for mailbox moves. The caveats are real, though: Takeout only exports files you own, admin export lands in a Cloud Storage bucket rather than your new platform, and none of the tools maps permissions, connects sign-on or verifies the result. That work is manual either way.