SME requirements list for a switch from Microsoft 365

The licence email from Microsoft is back in your inbox. Twenty accounts, a new price, and somewhere in the back of your mind that question that has been around for a while: can this be done differently, and in Europe?

You are not the only one thinking that. Yet the search often gets stuck on a row of separate services: an email provider here, a storage service there. In this piece you get a requirements list to measure every alternative against. After that, you see per component what Noveu does of it today.

Why do businesses look beyond Microsoft?

The reasons differ per business, but a few keep coming back:

• Jurisdiction. Microsoft is an American company and falls under the CLOUD Act from 2018. That law gives US authorities access to data at American companies, even in a European data centre.
• Shaky transfer rules. The European Court declared the arrangements on data transfers to the US invalid in 2015 and in 2020 (Schrems II ruling). The current Data Privacy Framework from 2023 is also being challenged.
• Dependence. Prices, terms and features change without you having any say in it.
• Customers who ask questions. Healthcare, government and larger clients increasingly want to know where you store their data.

Which rules apply to your sector, you can see on our compliance page.

The requirements list

A full alternative must contain at least:

• Mail and calendar that work with the apps your team already uses, via open protocols such as IMAP and SMTP.
• File sharing, with version history.
• Writing documents and editing them together, and being able to open Word files.
• Chat for the team, so that the conversation is not only in Teams.
• Video calling, internally and with customers.
• One place to manage users, permissions and sign-in security.
• A way out: you must be able to take your data with you in open formats.

Go through the list with a few colleagues. What do you use every day, what once a month and what never? What nobody uses does not need to come along to a new environment.

What Noveu does of it today

This is what Noveu Werkplek offers:

• Mail on our own mail server.
• Files and Notes.
• Writing, sharing and exporting documents.
• Contacts, with import from vCard and CSV files.
• Calendar: you plan and manage your appointments and invite colleagues and external addresses.
• Messages (beta) and Forms (beta).
• Noveu Meet via a link (beta).

Do you work with Word now? In Documents you import a Word file (.docx, up to 25 MB), and you export a document as a Word file (.docx) or as a PDF with house style. Your changes are saved automatically. How that works is in the help for Documents. What Noveu and Microsoft 365 do per component, you can see on Microsoft 365 alternative compared, and for municipalities and implementing organisations on the digital workplace for government.

Your data and backups are stored in a Hetzner data centre in Falkenstein, Germany. Cloudflare (US) sits at the edge of the network.

And the costs?

Compare costs per month, for your whole team, and include what you now buy separately on top. Think of an AI assistant, extra storage or a separate tool for compliance. On the page Microsoft 365 alternative compared the items are set out side by side. Our own prices are on the pricing page, always per month.

How to go about it

1. Complete the requirements list above for your own business and note for each line how important it is.
2. Put each alternative next to it and ask per component whether it works today.
3. Ask where your data and backups are stored, and which law the supplier falls under.
4. Test with two or three colleagues before you cancel anything.