Software that can replace Microsoft 365 has existed for years. LibreOffice has been around for more than fifteen years. OnlyOffice for nearly twenty. Collabora Online has been running in government systems across Europe for years. And yet analysts, industry commentators, and even some open source advocates keep repeating the same line: there is no real alternative to Microsoft 365.
How is that possible? And what does EuroOffice actually add?
The alternatives that already exist
LibreOffice is the best-known open source office suite in the world. It is governed by the Document Foundation, a German charitable foundation, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The governments of Denmark and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein are currently migrating their entire workplaces to LibreOffice. It is free, open source, and entirely independent of American tech companies.
OnlyOffice has been around almost as long. It is a browser-based suite that works seamlessly with Microsoft formats, and for years was the standard choice for anyone extending Nextcloud with document editing. But OnlyOffice has a complicated ownership story. The company behind the software, Ascensio System SIA, is formally registered in Latvia, but has ties to Russian parent companies. In August 2023, a Singapore holding company was announced as the new top-level owner. For European organisations thinking seriously about digital sovereignty, that is a legitimate concern.
Collabora Online is the solution we use at Innoframe for document editing in our managed stack. It is based on LibreOffice, fully open source, and developed by a company with European roots. It does what it needs to do: browser-based document editing, compatible with Microsoft formats, and fully under the control of the client.
So the alternatives exist. Where is the problem, then?
Why people still stay with Microsoft
The honest answer: interface friction. Most people know Microsoft Office. They know the ribbon, the keyboard shortcuts, the way Word formats a document. LibreOffice looks different, and that is enough to trigger resistance from anyone without a technical background.
OnlyOffice partly solved this by building an interface that closely mirrors Microsoft Office. But the governance questions are a stumbling block for organisations that explicitly want to avoid their data ending up in the wrong hands.
Collabora works well, but is for good reason more of an IT department choice than an end-user one. The experience is functional, but requires adjustment.
In short: the tools exist. But an open source, European alternative that simultaneously mirrors the Microsoft interface and has transparent governance? That did not exist yet.
What EuroOffice is trying to be
EuroOffice is a browser-based office suite built by a European alliance that includes Ionos, Nextcloud, Proton, and Open Project. It runs entirely in the browser, supports both Microsoft formats (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) and open formats (ODT, ODS), and its interface is deliberately designed to stay as close to Microsoft Office as possible.
It is not a standalone application. EuroOffice is an editing module that gets embedded into existing platforms like Nextcloud or Proton Docs. File storage and permission management are handled by the host platform. Think of it as the editing engine you slot into infrastructure you already control.
A fork with a story
EuroOffice is not built from scratch. It is a fork of OnlyOffice, the codebase that has formed the basis of the Nextcloud office integration for years. The reasons for the split say something about what was wrong with the original software.
OnlyOffice refused to accept external contributions, restricted mobile editing in its free tier, and was opaque about how code commits were handled. For an open source project that an increasing number of European organisations depend on, that is a problem. The ownership structure only made things worse.
OnlyOffice’s reaction to the announcement of EuroOffice was telling. They accused EuroOffice of violating the AGPL v3 licence, specifically a clause requiring forks to retain OnlyOffice’s logo and branding. EuroOffice countered that adding such restrictions is incompatible with the AGPL itself, a position backed by the Free Software Foundation and Bradley Kuhn, one of the authors of the AGPL. No lawsuit has been filed. But OnlyOffice did terminate its eight-year partnership with Nextcloud.
When an incumbent responds to a new competitor with legal threats rather than better software, that says something about where confidence actually lies.
Is EuroOffice actually necessary?
That is the real question. And the honest answer is: possibly.
If you are already running Collabora or LibreOffice and it does what it needs to do, EuroOffice is not relevant to you for the time being. There is no reason to switch to something that is still in development.
But if the barrier for your end users is the problem, EuroOffice is potentially interesting. A familiar interface, combined with open source code, European governance, and a broadly supported industrial consortium, is a combination that has not existed until now.
The political context also gives the project tailwind. GDPR, NIS2, the EU Data Act, and the broader tension between Europe and the US around data legislation mean that sovereignty is on the agenda of every IT department and every legal team in Europe. EuroOffice arrives in that climate with the right message.
Our position
At Innoframe, we use Collabora Online as the document editing module in our managed stack. It is open source, European, and ticks every box we care about: data sovereignty, GDPR compliance, no vendor lock-in. It does its job well.
EuroOffice is not production-ready yet. A technical preview is available as a Docker container on GitHub, but a stable release is not expected until summer 2026. We are following the development and will evaluate it at that point as a potential addition or successor.
What we can already say: it is the first credible, broadly backed initiative that attempts to fill the missing link between the existing open source tools and the end user who simply wants to get work done without a learning curve.
That is worth watching. Get in touch