A European Alternative to Microsoft 365
Collabora Online and a European stack that covers what the bundle does, at roughly a fifth of the per-seat price, with your documents under the law you actually chose.
Microsoft 365 is rarely a decision. It is a default that renews itself. The question worth asking is not whether Word is good (it is) but who your documents answer to once they live in an American cloud. Every file, every spreadsheet, every board paper sits inside a legal regime that follows the operator, not the geography. Moving the documents layer is the single highest-leverage sovereignty move most organisations can make, because it touches everyone every day and because the replacement is genuinely ready.
What replaces what
The bundle unpacks into four jobs, and each has a European or open-source answer that can be adopted on its own timetable.
| Microsoft 365 component | European / open-source replacement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint | Collabora Online (LibreOffice) | Native .docx, .xlsx, .pptx read and write; browser co-editing |
| OneDrive / SharePoint | Nextcloud | Sync, sharing and versioning on storage you choose |
| Exchange / Outlook | Proton Mail or Tutanota | Zero-access encryption; the provider cannot read stored mail |
| Teams meetings | Jitsi Meet | Browser-based, no account to join, recordings stay on your estate |
What it costs
Published list pricing, Q1 2026, per user per year: Microsoft 365 Business Standard about €150. Collabora Online with LibreOffice about €30. A 50-seat organisation is comparing roughly €7,500 a year with €1,500, an 80% reduction on the documents line alone. The savings calculator runs the same published figures against your own seat count, including storage, email and video.
How migration works
The path is the same four steps used across every AltLibre engagement. Assessment maps what you actually use, which is usually a fraction of the bundle. A pilot group moves first and breaks things on purpose, because macros and add-ins are the honest exception to file compatibility and they should fail in the pilot, not in finance. Training follows, then a phased rollout timed to your renewal date rather than the vendor's.
Further reading
- The case for European digital sovereignty — the dependency argument behind every page on this site.
- Residency is not sovereignty — why an EU region of a US cloud changes geography, not jurisdiction.
- The last American anchor: the login — the identity question that decides whether a migration is real.
Questions organisations actually ask
Will my Word, Excel and PowerPoint files still open?
Yes. Collabora is built on LibreOffice and reads and writes the same OOXML formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) that your correspondents use. Documents round-trip in both directions; the interchange problem that stopped most migrations a decade ago has largely disappeared. Complex macros and esoteric Excel add-ins are the honest exception, and they are exactly what the pilot phase exists to catch.
What replaces Teams, OneDrive and Exchange?
Microsoft 365 is a bundle, so the European answer is a stack rather than a single product. Collabora Online covers document editing and collaboration, Nextcloud covers file sync and sharing, Proton Mail or Tutanota covers email and calendar, and Jitsi covers video meetings. Each piece is European or open source, and each can be adopted on its own timetable.
Is this actually GDPR compliant?
The software is only half of the answer; where it runs is the other half. Self-hosted or EU-hosted deployment means your documents sit under European law rather than the US CLOUD Act. Microsoft cannot make that promise for its own cloud, as its French Senate testimony in 2025 made plain. Residency in an EU region of a US cloud changes the geography, not the jurisdiction.
What does it really cost?
On published list pricing (Q1 2026), Microsoft 365 Business Standard runs about €150 per user per year. Collabora Online with LibreOffice runs about €30. For a 50-seat organisation that is roughly €7,500 a year against €1,500, before counting the OneDrive and Exchange components you may no longer need to buy twice. The calculator on this site does the arithmetic for your own seat count.
How long does migration take?
A pilot group can be running in weeks. A full migration follows the same four-step path used across this site: assessment, pilot, training, then phased rollout. The organisations that stall are the ones that try to move everything in one weekend; the ones that succeed start with the team whose renewal is closest.
Do we lose anything by leaving?
Two things, and both are manageable. Real-time co-editing in Collabora is good but younger than Microsoft's, and the macro and add-in ecosystem does not transfer. What you gain is a documents layer with no telemetry to a foreign vendor, no licence renegotiation every three years, and no exposure to a legal regime you did not choose.