Nextcloud acquires webmail service Roundcube

Roundcube, an open source webmail client, joins the organization behind Nextcloud. That company will invest extra in the email client in the coming years. Roundcube remains available as a standalone service.

Nextcloud and Roundcube announced the ‘merger’ on Wednesday morning. Nextcloud says it will hire additional staff in the short term to accelerate the development of Roundcube. The two services want to offer alternatives to those of large tech companies and invest in them together.

The two companies report that a ‘direct merger’ between Nextcloud and Roundcube will not happen for the time being. Both open source services remain available separately and maintain their focus on self-hosting and privacy. Nextcloud Mail, the existing email client within Nextcloud, will not be replaced by Roundcube or vice versa.

Nextcloud is an open source service that allows users to host cloud storage themselves. Roundcube is a similar open source service, but for self-hosting an email client based on IMAP. Both services are open source and free to use on your own system, a Docker container or in the cloud on, for example, a VPS.

A mailbox in Roundcube. Source: Nextcloud