Support

Just because you’re not paying for it with money does not mean it's free. There are many different ways a company can make money by hosting data. Common ways of doing so are analysing, profiling, sharing and selling your personal data.

The Good Cloud offers a truly free version with 2 GB storage so you can preview our service without your data being used for anything else. If you appreciate the service please consider supporting us by upgrading to a paid plan.

Every payment transaction costs money and yearly payments allow us to keep the costs as low as possible.

It is currently not possible to upgrade the free subscription with more storage space. If you choose a paid option later on, you will need to transfer your files to your new account. We understand that this is a bit cumbersome and are working on a solution. Using the paid subscriptions it is possible to change your storage space as needed.

The payment methods we currently offer are: Paypal, SEPA transfer, iDeal, SOFORT banking, Bancontact, KBC/CBC Button and ING Home'Pay. We are trying to add more and want to offer monthly payment options. Unfortenately this seems hard as we've already been turned down by 3 other payment providers.

All users with a paid subscription can use the Good Cloud environment with a total of 5 people. In the free environment, this functionality is unfortunately not possible. If you wish to use this feature, we kindly ask you to contact us. We are working on an account portal where you have the possibility to add users yourself. Until then, don't hesitate to contact us, we'll be happy to arrange it for you.

If you have purchased a paid subscription and would like to increase or decrease your storage space afterwards, we can adjust this for you. Just fill in the contact form and let us know which subscription you would like. We will then inform you about the technical and financial aspects of your request.

We are working on designing account management for each paying customer. This will make it even easier to modify your storage plan.

Your account can be deleted in several ways. You can either end it yourself by sending us a message and we'll delete your account right away, or if you stop paying for a paid account, in which case we will delete your data after 6 weeks. All files you created in your account will be deleted. This includes files you have shared with others through your account. In case you have shared files with others, please inform them to save these files in other ways to prevent unwanted loss of data. If you would like to know more, look here:

https://nextcloud.com/blog/what-happens-to-your-data-when-a-user-account-is-deleted

You may be wondering how we can guarantee the privacy of your data when others can't. The answer lies in every aspect of our business and service.

Our people. It all starts with our people. Even though we aren't against public cloud services like Facebook or Google, we do mind that a lot of public cloud services use your data for their own purposes without being transparent about it. The people at The Good Cloud have strong beliefs about privacy and will respect it in every aspect of our business (administration, managing The Good Cloud, sales, communication, etc.)

Our Datacenter. This is where our servers are connected to the internet. We have chosen XS4ALL, a Dutch organisation known for respecting privacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS4ALL

Our (own) Hardware. We wanted to make sure we have every guarantee no-one will look into your data. That is why we use our own hardware in stead of using Amazon Online servers or another public cloud service. Although this is more expensive, it gives us complete control over every aspect of our service.

Our Software. We use open source software as a basis for our service. It's a bit much to explain why we like open source software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software, but what it means in short is the workings of this software can be viewed by anyone. This gives anyone an opportunity to examine the code to make sure there are no unwanted features like spying. Our main sync and share platform is open source, as is our storage solutions and the operating system of our servers

Other software tools. Even though we would like to exclusively use open source software hosted on our servers, it's just not a viable financial option. Our service is secure on open source, but in our daily work we use other tools like Skype and Slack for collaboration. These tools are for doing our own work, not to store your data. We do check every now and then if there are other viable open source option available to host ourselves, so we will move away from using these in the future.

Yes it does! We use an XS4ALL datacenter which has been running on wind power from the "Amalia" facility located off the coast of IJmuiden since 2011.

Yes, this is certainly possible. You can sign up for a free account using Nextclouds simple signup program here. Our free hosting does have some limitations and stricter settings then are the default for our paid subscriptions. For example, public shares are only allowed with a password and will expire in 7 days. But our free accounts do have a basic 2GB storage quota to get you started. Please be aware that because we set up our paid service with a server per paying customer it will not be possible to upgrade this account but it’s an excellent step to take fur further looking into the use of our service. You can of course transfer over the files when you have purchased a subscription or keep both accounts.

Please send us an email at abuse@thegood.cloud. State which account is being used and what kind of abuse it is being used for. We don't want our service to be used by wrongdoers so please let us know and we'll look into it.

At the end of every month we perform various maintenance tasks. This can sometimes result in a temporary inaccessibility of the web-interface and mobile apps. You can ensure access to you files during the maintenance by using the desktop synchronization software. The synchronization software on your desktop and the mobile apps can give a variety of connectivity errors during maintenance but will resume normal operations when the maintenance is concluded.

Keeping our servers and infrastructure secure requires keeping our entire infrastructure up to date. We understand maintenance can be inconvenient and try to minimize downtime of our services as much as possible. Thank you for understanding.

Availability and maintenance

You'll find our terms & conditions in the checkout process of our webshop, after purchasing a subscription. For your convenience here's a direct link. These terms and conditions come from NLdigital, which is a Dutch collective that helps us (and more than 600 other businesses) with stuff like using terms and conditions for your company. It's a very legislative text, but it basically states you can't do anything unlawful, like spreading terrorism. We are planning to create a what-does-it-mean-manual so you can better understand the terms and conditions. That make take a while as we are quite busy and our wishlist/todo is only getting bigger. However, if you have questions about the terms and conditions, let us know.

Nextcloud is the developer of the (open source) software we offer. Our storage service is set up using Nextcloud servers. We have chosen to work with this party because they share the same values as us regarding privacy. The service is used all over the world by both individuals and companies and offers all possibilities to easily collaborate online. If you are in general curious about what that is and what it looks like you can find more information on their website and try their demo service here. But please be aware this temporary account will be deleted every 60 minutes.

Your data is stored on our own hardware in our datacentre in the Netherlands. Your data is protected by Dutch and European laws like the GDPR.

The Dutch Revenue Service and international tax laws obligate us to do so. We only store this information as long as it's required by these laws and delete this information as soon as we're allowed. Our only intent is to complete purchases and transactions in the way we are legally required to.

We want to offer everyone the freedom to choose their preferred payment provider. Even though PayPal is not the most privacy orientated payment provider, it is very often requested by our customers and widely used. We would really like to offer credit card payments but have difficulties finding a payment provider that does not over charge on credit card payments and is clear on their policies. PayPal does offer an easy way to make multiple payment options available to all our customers.

We do recommend everyone to review their privacy statement in order to make an informed decision.

PayPal Privacy Statement

We will always be on the look out to improve and expand our available payment options. If you have any questions or recommendations don't hesitate to contact us.

Only the system engineers have access to the servers.

We manage our hardware completely ourselves, because of this we also manage all logs in person. We aim to delete all logs automatically after 3 months. The firewalls are already configured this way. The monitoring isn't (yet), because we also need some historical data to be able to do our job properly and will monitor system data (like servers) only (no user data). The system data will only be used to manage our network. No form of data will ever leave our site. The data is only accessible to the system engineers and will never be shared by any other party under any circumstances.

We have multiple free usage servers, look for a list of them on https://uptime.thegood.cloud. If you can't remember which you used and recently subscribed, you probably used the server with the highest number.

At the moment we don’t have enough capacity to help free users with their questions related to the software.

For now we want to focus on providing excellent support for our paying customers and optimizing our service. It’s just not economically feasible to provide support on the free software offered, therefore we would like to refer you to the developer of the software itself, Nextcloud. A lot of information can be found on https://nextcloud.com/support.

If you have a problem that only relates to the hosting and not to the software, we will be more than happy to answer your question. Let us know what’s wrong through the contact form and we will process your report as soon as possible.

Yes, if you install the client software, you can copy all or part of the data to The Good Cloud. The client software ensures that the changes on the NAS are immediately synchronized with The Good Cloud. This way you always have the right data available both internally and online.

No, that's not possible. We manage all versions because we first test them extensively and, if necessary, optimize them. This way we prevent you from having to solve annoying errors or bugs yourself. Doing so, we can guarantee that you will always be able to use the service effortlessly, without any hassle.

This has to do with the fact that we'll first test and possibly optimize all versions that are released. We want you to be able to use our service carefree and hassle-free. By testing the new release first, we prevent you from being troubled by possible errors or bugs. As soon as we have tested the new version, all users are automatically updated with the new version.

Use of your own domain name is possible for subscriptions of 500 GB or more. If you want to make use of this option please send us a message stating the e-mail address you have subscribed to. Simply let us know which domain name you want and we will arrange it for you.

Yes it is! The Good Cloud offers each user the possibility to enable two factor authentication. By using an additional authentication tool (i.e. an app on your phone), you create an extra layer of security for your user account. See this article on how to enable two factor authentication.

The Good Cloud guarantees the privacy of your business. The data of your customers, employees and all other (sensitive) company data is stored in one safe place. The Good Cloud has extensive experience with the implementation, installation and configuration of the software. We will make sure that the implementation of our service will be easy and smooth.

By following this link and filling out the form.

Absolutely. With every business subscriptions we offer to help with implementing The Good Cloud. The intensity and duration depends on the choice of the business subscription.

Implementation processes can also be purchased separately. If you would like more information regarding implementation or individual projects, feel free to contact us.

There is no maximum number of users. If you would like to purchase The Good Cloud for a considerable number of users, please contact us. We will inform you about the possibilities and will provide you with a tailor-made quote.

Plus and Premium subscriptions include the use of your own domain name. With the Basic and Standard subscription, this additional option will be charged once (costs €100,- excl. btw/VAT). For more information about all optional services, please have a look at our detailed comparison of the subscriptions.

Our telephone helpdesk is available from Monday to Friday between 09:00 - 17:00 hrs (CET). Support outside office hours is possible on request.

You don't, we’ll do that for you.

However, we are working on a feature that will allow you to manage the users yourself. Would you like to be informed when this is possible? Please contact us.