Nextcloud. I really want to like it, but it’s making it really difficult.
I like what Nextcloud offers with its feature set and how easily it replaces a bunch of services under one roof (files, calendar, contacts, notes, to-do lists, photos etc.), but no matter how hard I try and how much I optimize its resources on my home server, it feels slow to use, even on hardware that is ranging from decent to good. Then I opened developer tools and found the culprit.

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Nextcloud's sluggish performance stems from excessive JavaScript bundle sizes, with 15-20 MB downloaded per page load. Core bundles like core-common.js (4.71 MB) and individual apps like Calendar (5.94 MB) and Notes (4.36 MB) create significant execution overhead. Even with caching, browsers must parse and execute massive amounts of code on each visit, resulting in 5-10 second load times on mobile devices. The author has begun migrating to lighter alternatives like Vikunja (1.5 MB) for tasks and Immich for photos, while acknowledging Nextcloud's convenience for other features.

Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

It really is terribly slow, the platform is unusable due to this. I nevertheless use it for syncing files and calendar and I like the desktop integration.

Feels? It is slow. I had set up Nextcloud several times and it was always terrible. I have given up on it, since then. I’m wondering what kind of monster PCs other use, who are generally happy with it. Probably some big VPS just for Nextcloud and no other app whatsoever.

As a software engineer I must say that their code quality is in decline in the last few years. Their answer to performance critics is “get better hardware” or “ok let’s cache it”. Their AI apps and external apps support (AppAPI) in particular is total rubbish, like it was stitched together by interns.
Nonetheless; it’s a true one of a kind FOSS replacement for services like Microsoft 365 or Google One.