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Fully Managed Cubby
as a Service

Deploy Cubby as a fully managed service starting at €9/mo. Get automated backups, SSL, updates, support and monitoring included.

Cubby is an open-source collaborative file manager — sharing, in-browser previews, and office editing through Collabora or OnlyOffice — combining the convenience of Dropbox or Google Drive with the control of self-hosted infrastructure.

Free 7-day trial  99.9% Uptime SLA  No credit card  Cancel anytime

Free 7-day trial  99.9% Uptime SLA
No credit card  Cancel anytime

Cubby

Cubby

STARTING AT

€9/month
Automated Backups
Monitoring
Automated Updates
Auto SSL

USAGE

Unlimited
Human Support
Custom Domains
Terminal Access
File Manager Access
Deploy in your region 21 locations worldwide
GermanyFinlandNetherlandsUKSwedenUnited StatesCanadaSingaporeJapanAustraliaBrazilSouth Africa+9 more →
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ABOUT THE SOFTWARE

What is Cubby

Cubby is an open-source collaborative file manager built for self-hosters who want files done well and nothing else — sharing, in-browser previews, and document editing through Collabora or OnlyOffice. It is deliberately not a full Nextcloud-style suite.

Cubby is licensed under AGPL-3.0, with 105 tagged releases and over 1,100 commits in the upstream tree. The project's source lives at github.com/getcubby/cubby and the canonical site is getcubby.org. The stack is Node.js on the backend, Vue.js on the frontend, PostgreSQL for metadata, and the filesystem for content.

The project's defining decision is scope. Cubby's maintainers have stated they will not add calendars, contacts, mail, or note-taking — features that drift Nextcloud into a full suite. The result is a focused file-sharing layer with full-text search (recoll-based, added in 2.3.2), group folders (added in 2.2.0), and OpenID Connect as the only authentication mode. For teams that want files only — without an everything-app — Cubby is one of the cleanest open-source picks available today.

FEATURES

What Cubby does

Cubby ships the file-collaboration primitives a small team actually uses — focused, not maximal. Each feature below is part of the upstream project; nothing here is a DANIAN add-on.

Built-in viewers

Preview text, code, PDFs, and images directly in the browser without forced downloads. Useful for quick reviews and for clients who arrived through a share link.

Collaborative markdown editor

Work simultaneously on markdown documents with multiple cursors. The team picks markdown over docx; the markdown editor handles it without a separate tool.

Group folders and external shares

Group folders with member and viewer roles, plus read-only external share links for clients and partners outside the OIDC tenant.

Full-text search

Recoll-based full-text search indexes inside PDFs, text files, code, and office documents. Added in 2.3.2; the reason research and legal teams pick Cubby over a generic file manager.

Office editing through WOPI

Integrate with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice to edit .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .odt and similar formats in-browser with track-changes and concurrent editing.

OpenID Connect authentication

Single sign-on against any OIDC issuer — Keycloak, Authentik, Authelia, Google, Microsoft Entra. No local password database; OIDC is the only auth mode by design.

WebDAV access

Mount Cubby from desktop clients — Mountain Duck, Cyberduck, rclone, or the Nextcloud desktop client pointed at Cubby's endpoint. After the March 2026 fix, group folders and shared items are correctly exposed.

AGPL-3.0 open source

Source-available under AGPL-3.0 with 105 tagged releases. The data on disk is in a documented format; no lock-in, full export at any time.

WHAT'S ALWAYS INCLUDED

Every app. Fully managed.
Nothing extra to pay for.

Every app you deploy includes the full managed service — security, backups, updates, and support from day one.

Automatic updates and patches

Apps run the latest stable version. Security patches applied silently, with rollback if needed.

Daily off-site backups

Multiple daily backups in redundant off-site locations. One-click restore if anything goes wrong.

24/7 uptime monitoring

Continuous monitoring with instant alerting. We respond before you notice.

SSL, firewall, DDoS protection

Auto-renewing SSL, hardened firewall rules, DDoS mitigation on every deployment.

Performance and scaling

We monitor resource usage continuously. When your app needs more headroom, we flag it and upgrade with your explicit approval.

Dedicated engineering support

Real engineers on chat. DNS, SMTP & migration help. All included in €9.

WHY MANAGED

Why teams pick managed Cubby

In January 2025 Google bundled Gemini into every paid Workspace tier and raised list prices 17–22% — Business Standard moved from $12 to $14/user/month, Plus from $18 to $22. Existing customers saw the increase from March 17. That same year, institutional Dropbox contracts started not renewing — Cambridge University's June 7, 2025 non-renewal is one published example. Teams that quietly tolerated per-seat creep started looking for an exit.

"Just running Cubby" doesn't include the work behind a working Cubby. The app requires an OpenID Connect issuer — vanilla install means standing up a separate identity service (Keycloak, Authentik, Authelia) and managing client IDs, secrets, and rotation. Collabora or OnlyOffice runs on a sibling subdomain with its own TLS, its own resource footprint, and its own WOPI handshake against Cubby. PostgreSQL needs a backup discipline that survives a disk loss. SMTP needs to be wired so share-notification emails actually arrive. None of this is hard one weekend. All of it is a recurring tax.

There is also a real Cubby-specific gap to plan around: external share links are read-only by design and currently lack native password protection and expiry dates. The project maintainers have confirmed this is on the roadmap but un-dated.

REVIEWS

Hear from customers ​like you​​​​​​​

Successful businesses and professionals around the world rely on DANIAN every day

USE CASES

Three teams who run Cubby on DANIAN

These are representative team types we set up most often. Each starts with the same flat €9 plan.

 12-PERSON DESIGN AGENCY

Leaving Dropbox Standard after the per-seat math crossed $180/month

Germany region. OIDC against the agency's existing identity provider. Collabora published on office.agency.danian.co so client PDFs render in-browser without forced downloads. 500 GB working pool. One group folder per client, read-only external share links for client review. Sibling upload-portal subdomain for inbound asset drops, since Cubby guest shares are read-only by design.

 6-PARTNER LAW FIRM

Replacing OneDrive after partners asked for in-browser document review

Sweden region. OIDC with 2FA enforced at the identity layer. OnlyOffice integration for drafting engagement letters with track-changes. 250 GB pool. One group folder per matter; folder marked read-only at engagement close. WebDAV mounted on partner workstations with the Windows BasicAuthLevel registry value pre-applied before rollout. §147 AO ten-year retention enforced by folder structure.

 15-PERSON ARCHITECTURE STUDIO

Running CAD, PDF, and image handoffs on a single managed file layer

Netherlands region. OIDC. Collabora for RFI and spec documents. 1 TB pool sized for image-heavy projects, thumbnail cache tuned generously so the file list stays responsive at 100,000+ files. WebDAV mounted on drafting workstations after the March 2026 fix that exposes group folders correctly. Read-only external links for general-contractor deliverable handoffs.

COMPARISON

Four ways to run Cubby

The same outcome — your team's files, sharing, and editing — reached by four different paths. The numbers below are current published list prices for the alternatives most teams replace with Cubby. Math at three team sizes; the gap widens with seats.

 PATHWHAT YOU ACTUALLY RUN1 USER5 USERS10 USERS OPS TIME
Google Workspace
Business Standard ($14/user/month annual after the Jan 2025 + Gemini bundling increase). Files in Drive, no self-hosting.$14/mo$70/mo$140/mo
0 hours
Self-host on a VPS
~$24/month production-class VPS plus object-storage backup ($5) plus monitoring ($15). You install Cubby, OIDC, Collabora, SMTP, PostgreSQL.$44+/mo$44+/mo$44+/mo5–10 hr setup,
1–2 hr/mo
Home server
Synology DS925+ at $639.99 diskless (current generation, available since June 4, 2025) plus drives, UPS, business-grade internet with static IP, and off-site backup.€210+/mo€210+/mo€210+/mo2–4 hr/mo
DANIAN Managed Cubby€9 per Cubby instance, per month, flat. Off-site backups, human support.€9/mo€9/mo€9/mo0 hours

Prices verified May 2026 against published vendor pricing pages. At 10 seats, replacing Google Workspace Business Standard with managed Cubby saves roughly $130/month on the file layer alone; replacing Dropbox Standard ($15/user/month, 3-seat minimum) saves roughly $140/month at 10 seats.

BY INDUSTRY

Cubby for specific industries

The industries below are the ones where Cubby's file-only scope is a feature rather than a limitation. Each block names the operational standard that shapes the workflow, the DANIAN configuration choice for Cubby and that industry, the workflow that actually runs, and one concrete number a buyer can sanity-check.

Client-NDA discipline is the operational standard — most agency MSAs name confidentiality and copyright provenance explicitly, and file handoffs are where those clauses break in practice. The configuration choice on DANIAN is one Cubby group folder per client, read-only external share links for client review, and Collabora pre-wired on a sibling subdomain so PDF and PSD-export previews render in-browser without forcing downloads to a reviewer's laptop.

The workflow that runs: account manager drops the v3 deck into the client folder, generates a share link, emails the link via Cubby's built-in notify. The client clicks, previews, comments out-of-band. The link is read-only by design — the client cannot push files back, which is exactly the boundary the MSA expects. For inbound asset drops, we provision a sibling upload-portal subdomain so the inbound path is separated from the outbound share.

At 12 seats, an agency replacing Dropbox Standard moves from $180/month to €9/month for the file layer — a roughly 95% reduction on the line item, before counting saved internal-IT time on credential resets and bill audits.
Retention is the operational standard, and it varies by jurisdiction in ways generic file hosts gloss over. §147 AO in Germany requires ten years on tax-relevant records. The SRA in the UK requires six years on client matter files. France's RCAA sets a five-year floor. US tax records are state-by-state, often seven years. Attorney-client privilege handling layers on top. None of this is something a hosting provider can stamp on a page — it is a folder-structure discipline that the firm sets and the file host has to support without getting in the way.

On DANIAN, the configuration choice is OIDC with 2FA enforced at the identity layer, OnlyOffice or Collabora for engagement-letter co-editing, and one Cubby group folder per matter that is marked read-only at engagement close. WebDAV is exposed only for staff workstations, with the Windows registry value set firm-wide before rollout. Daily off-site backups, encrypted at the storage layer, land the retention obligation operationally.

At eight seats, replacing Microsoft 365 Business Standard at the post-July 2026 list price of $14/user/month annual means moving from roughly $112/month to €9/month for the file-collaboration layer — a 92% reduction.
Large-file handling, drawing-revision discipline, and contractor handoffs are the operational standard. For studios working on public-sector tenders, signed-PDF requirements apply to particular deliverables and the host needs to keep those documents intact and dated through review. Cubby's strength here is the WebDAV mount — desktop CAD and drafting tools work against project folders as if they were local, which generic web-only file hosts cannot match.

On DANIAN, the configuration choice is an oversized storage pool (1 TB default for image-heavy tenants), WebDAV pre-enabled with the March 2026 group-folder fix in place, Collabora for RFI and spec documents, and a per-project group folder pattern with subfolders like 01_drawings, 02_specs, 03_contractor_handoffs. Read-only external share links carry the final-deliverable subfolder to the general contractor at handoff.

At 15 seats, a studio replacing a per-seat file-collaboration product at $20/user/month annual moves from $300/month to €9/month — a 97% reduction on the file layer alone.
Per-client confidentiality is the operational standard, and data-minimization — only holding the personal data the engagement actually needs — applies wherever the consultancy holds personal data on behalf of a client. The pattern is one isolated group folder per client, external share links for every deliverable, and no shared inbox for inbound files.

On DANIAN, the configuration choice is OIDC against the consultancy's identity provider, SMTP wired so share-notification emails leave the box on day one, and a sibling upload-portal subdomain for any client that needs to send files back. The deliverable handoff is the standard workflow: drop the deck into the client's group folder, generate a read-only share link, email it via Cubby's notify, done.

A four-person consultancy replacing Google Workspace Business Standard ($56/month) plus Dropbox Plus ($9.99/month) for the file layer alone moves to €9/month — keeping Workspace only for the parts Cubby is not designed to replace (Gmail, Calendar, Meet).
Institutional research-data-management policies and funder retention obligations are the operational standards. Major research funders typically require ten years of retention on underlying research data. Student-data handling rules layer on for groups working with academic populations. Cubby's full-text search across PDFs, datasets, and office documents (recoll-based, added in 2.3.2) is the reason research groups pick it over a generic web file manager.

On DANIAN, the configuration choice is an oversized storage pool for datasets, group folders organized by principal investigator with subfolders per student or per paper, the markdown collaborative editor enabled for paper drafts, and full-text indexing tuned to the tenant's write cadence. Backups land the ten-year retention obligation operationally without buying a separate archive product.

A 20-person research group leaving a non-renewed Dropbox Business contract (cf. Cambridge University, June 7, 2025) sees the line item move from the institutional rate down to €9/month flat, regardless of seat count.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Everything teams ask before signing up — answered straight, without sales speak.

Three groups: technical setup, migration, and how DANIAN works as a service.

01

Technical and configuration

Yes. Cubby integrates with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice through the WOPI protocol. We run the office service on a sibling subdomain — office.your-tenant.danian.co — and configure the WOPI handshake at provisioning. Document editing, track-changes, and concurrent editing work in-browser without a local install.
Yes. WebDAV exposes the user's home folder, group folders, and shared items after a March 2026 upstream fix that resolved a long-standing scope bug. Windows needs a one-time registry change — set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\BasicAuthLevel to 2 and restart the WebClient service — to accept basic authentication. macOS and Linux clients work out of the box.
Text, code, PDF, and images preview natively. Office documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .odt) open in Collabora or OnlyOffice through WOPI. We monitor the thumbnail-cache footprint on image-heavy tenants so the file browser stays responsive — a real concern at 100,000+ files that you'd otherwise tune by hand.
Yes — recoll-based full-text search across files and documents was added in version 2.3.2. It indexes inside PDFs, text files, code, and office documents, which is the main reason research and legal teams pick Cubby over a generic file manager. We tune the index refresh cadence to match the tenant's write pattern.
There is no first-party desktop sync client or mobile app. Any WebDAV-compatible client works: Mountain Duck and Cyberduck on macOS and Windows, the Nextcloud desktop client pointed at Cubby's WebDAV endpoint, and rclone for scripted sync. We provide endpoint URLs and per-user app passwords at provisioning.

02

Migration and onboarding

We can activate your app on your own custom domain/subdomain. Examples: mydomain.com, anyword.mydomain.com.
Or, on our randomized free subdomain. Example: 963.apps.danian.cloud
If you wish to use a custom domain/subdomain, select that option when ordering your app (or notify us later). We will send you the required DNS records and if needed, our tech team will modify them for you.
21 datacenter locations across six continents. You choose the region at provisioning. Application data sits in the region you choose; pick whichever is closest to your users or matches your data-residency preference.
Yes. Request a region migration from the dashboard and we run the move in the background. The system emails you when the migration completes; total transfer time depends on data volume but typical instances finish in a few hours. There is no extra charge for a region change.
Yes. Full data export is available at any time, in a portable format you can bring to any infrastructure.
rclone is the standard path. Configure rclone with your Dropbox remote on one side and Cubby's WebDAV endpoint on the other, then run a staged sync. After the March 2026 WebDAV scope fix, group folders and shared items are correctly exposed, so the destination structure matches the source 1:1.
Same rclone pattern, but the Google Drive remote has API rate limits that force a staged sync for larger accounts. Plan for the migration to run overnight across several windows for any account above a few hundred gigabytes.
Use rclone's OneDrive remote against Cubby's WebDAV endpoint. SharePoint sites map to Cubby group folders cleanly once you decide on the ownership model. We recommend a service-account owner for each migrated group folder so offboarding the original user doesn't break shared files.

03

Billing, support, and platform

€9 covers everything we do for that app: hardware in the region you choose, daily off-site backups with one-click restore, automatic security patches and version upgrades, 24/7 monitoring, SSL and firewall, and engineering support on Email/LiveChat. There are no setup fees or hidden line items. For more info see our Pricing page.
If you decide to continue, we charge €9/app/month from day 8. If you don't, the trial ends and you can export your data. No card is required for the trial, and we never auto-charge you without explicit consent.
No. The €9/month is flat regardless of how many users log into your app. Add 5 users or 50; the price doesn't change.
24/7 Live chat and email support, both staffed by engineers who run the systems. We handle DNS configuration, SMTP setup, app integrations, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and migration help. Response time is typically under an hour. There is no tier system — every customer gets the same support.
Yes. Cancel from the dashboard. We don't charge a cancellation fee, we don't lock data, and we will export your data to you on request before deletion. data to you on request before deletion.
Every customer instance is backed up daily to a separate region from the primary. We test restores. You can request a restore at any backup point within the retention window — usually 7 days for daily backups.
Your application data sits in the region you choose at provisioning — 21 datacenter locations across six continents. Account-level data (billing, account email, support ticket history) is processed centrally. Application data region is picked by you, per app.
99.9% uptime SLA on every app, every tenant. Service credits are documented at danian.co/service-level-agreement. The status page is located at status.danian.co.
When your tenant approaches the resource ceiling — the base tier holds 1 vCPU/RAM, 30 GB storage — we notify you. Resource upgrades happen with your explicit consent; we will not upgrade your tenant or charge you without it.
We wait. We don't suspend the app or delete your data on the first failed charge. We email you, you fix the card on file, and we continue.
Invoices can be downloaded from the billing dashboard in PDF the day each charge succeeds. EU VAT is added where applicable and the VAT-reverse-charge regime applies for VAT-registered businesses with a valid number.
150+ open-source apps across automation, team chat, file sync, analytics, AI, password management, email marketing, dev tools, project management, smart home, CMS, and federated social. See the full catalog →
Yes. Every instance comes with a web-based terminal and a file manager in your DANIAN management dashboard. Useful for managing your data and customizations.
Resources scale with your usage. If your app needs more vCPU, RAM, or storage, we add it — and we ask first before any change to your plan. €9 is the floor; resource-heavy workloads may price higher, but you'll always know in advance.
Yes. We have both a Partner program and an Affiliate program available. Anybody can sign up.
No contract. No minimum commitment. Cancel anytime from the dashboard with one click. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card. After the trial converts to paid, you can still cancel at any month without notice or penalty.

DEPLOY IN YOUR REGION

21 datacenter locations on six continents

Pick the region closest to your users.

United States, Germany, Finland, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Malaysia, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Chile, South Africa and more coming soon

Global Reach Map

Try managed Cubby for 7 days

No card. Cancel from the dashboard.