Clubs and associations run on volunteers, changing boards and a thin budget — and still hold membership lists, minutes, donation receipts and photographs of minors. Material that belongs neither in the treasurer's private account nor in a free cloud somewhere in the world. For non-profit associations we therefore offer special terms.
Which associations? Sports and gymnastics clubs, music, choral and carnival societies, support associations for schools, nurseries and fire brigades, shooting and allotment clubs, animal welfare and conservation groups, local history and cultural societies, youth organisations, social service providers and relief organisations. In short: if the tax office certifies you as non-profit, you qualify.
What is included:
Your name, not ours. With white labelling the interface and the e-mails carry your association's logo and colours. Your members see the club, not us.
Central administration. Accounts, groups and shares are managed in one place by the board. When the treasurer changes, access stays with the office instead of moving with the person — no more hunting for files left on someone's private computer.
Hosted by us or by you. Either you leave operations to us — in German data centres, under the GDPR — or you put PowerFolder on your own server, in the clubhouse or at your hosting provider. The choice is yours and can be changed later.
What it costs depends on the size of your association and how you want to run it. Tell us briefly who you are and how many members should work with it — we will sort out the rest in a conversation.
Meet us at Smart Country Convention 2026 in Berlin
From 13 to 15 October 2026 we will be at the Smart Country Convention in Berlin — Europe's leading event for digital government, run by Bitkom and Messe Berlin. We would be glad to meet you there. Arrange a meeting at the fair →
Why now? Extended support for SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 ended in July, and Office Online Server follows at the end of the year. That leaves many organisations with the same question: move to the Microsoft cloud — and bring their content within reach of the US CLOUD Act — or find a route that keeps data sovereignty in house. That is the conversation we most want to have in Berlin.
What we are bringing:
Operation in your own data centre. PowerFolder runs behind your firewall, attached to Active Directory, LDAP, SAML or Kerberos. Or in our German cloud, with a German contracting party and the Art. 28 GDPR processing agreement as part of the contract.
What a tender asks for. A granular audit log of every file action, which can be kept audit-proof and handed to your SIEM. Regular external penetration testing with a certificate. And an accessibility statement under the national implementation of EU Directive 2016/2102 — a point where tenders regularly stall.
Experience with migrations. A state ministry with 2,400 staff replaced SharePoint Online and was in production after six weeks. More than 1,500 organisations run PowerFolder in production, among them over 100 universities and public authorities.
AI without handing your files out of the building. An AI assistant can now be connected directly to PowerFolder: summarising responses, pulling deadlines out of notices, comparing tenders against the published criteria. The documents stay where they are — nothing is uploaded to an external service.
Let us arrange a time. A trade fair rarely leaves room for a quiet conversation on the spot. Tell us briefly what you are working on and we will keep a slot free: arrange a meeting or call +49 2132 / 97 92 290.
Smart Country Convention, 13–15 October 2026, Messe Berlin.
PowerFolder Server 28.1.102: fixes for interrupted inheritance, deep links and archiving
Hotfix 28.1.102 is available. It cleans up mainly where Service Pack 1 broke new ground: interrupted permission inheritance, which lets subfolders carry their own permissions instead of inheriting those of the folder above.
Interrupted inheritance. Renaming a directory that contains such subfolders now preserves their structure and permissions — previously they were dissolved in the process. Also fixed: subfolders a person is not allowed to enter were appearing in the folder list, and renaming a file inside such a subfolder failed. On top of that, the file entries of an interrupted subfolder are now removed cleanly from the folder above.
Deep links. A link leading straight into a folder with brackets in its name broke at the login. It works again.
Archiving. Archived files without a version marker stayed around indefinitely. They are now cleaned up under the same rules as all the others.
For anyone coming from Alfresco: old Alfresco Share links are recognised and redirected automatically to the matching PowerFolder folder. References in e-mails, wikis and documents still pointing at the old system no longer lead nowhere.
Ask your documents: connecting ChatGPT and Claude to PowerFolder
You are looking for one figure that sits in one of forty reports. You want to know what the responses to a case actually disagree about. You have to compare three tenders, each structured differently. Until now that meant opening a folder, opening a file, reading, opening the next file.
Now you can ask instead. An AI assistant — ChatGPT, Claude or another — can be connected directly to your PowerFolder. It reads the documents in the folders you let it see, and answers from them.
In companies that sounds like: “Which quotes have we sent this customer over the past two years, and what changed?” — “Build a timeline from the project folder.” — “Compare the old and the new specification and mark the differences.” — “Which test reports are still missing for handover?”
In public administration:“Summarise the responses to this case and show me where they contradict each other.” — “Which deadlines appear in these notices?” — “Which document contains the rule covering this question?” — “Compare the three tenders against the criteria from the invitation.”
In universities and research:“Summarise the interim reports in this project folder and list the open points.” — “Which measurement series are documented, and which are missing?” — “Turn these lecture slides into an outline for the script.” — “What do I need to state about data availability in the final report, and where is it written down?”
The difference from an AI service you upload files to: your documents stay where they are. They remain in PowerFolder, on servers in Germany, under your permissions. The assistant fetches what it needs for the answer — and sees only the folders you share with it.
Setting it up takes a few minutes. Under My account → Devices you create an access key and give it to the assistant along with your server address. That is all it takes; the guide in the wiki walks through it step by step.
One point that matters to us: the access key works like a password. Create a separate account for this — not your personal one — and share only the folders the assistant is meant to work with. Then what it can see is bounded from the start. Any key can be revoked with a single click.
And it will get simpler. We are building a native connector that you add in the assistant like any other app — no key to copy, your usual login including two-factor. Planned for ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral. We are not naming a date yet; until then the route above works, and it stays available afterwards. Read the guide
PowerFolder 28.1: break permission inheritance, CAPTCHA without third parties, wildcard search
Service pack 1 of the 28 series is above all about more control over who sees what. On a subfolder you can now break the inheritance of permissions — the folder then gets access rights of its own, independent of the folder above it. HR records or draft contracts inside a shared project folder stay visible only to the people who actually need them. Before you break inheritance, a warning dialog lists who will lose access; a dedicated filter shows every folder with interrupted inheritance, and each step is written to the audit log. The rule applies the same way everywhere — in the web portal, over WebDAV and SMB/Samba, in search and for share links — and it travels with a folder when the folder is copied.
Shared subfolders become easier to work with: you can copy, move and rename them in the web portal without losing the share. Anyone invited to a folder through a group can now leave it on their own.
Security without outside services: as an alternative to Google reCAPTCHA there is a local CAPTCHA that runs entirely on your own server — no call to a third party, no data transfer, selectable by configuration. Password fields no longer show what is typed, administrators can no longer log in as other server administrators, and many bundled libraries were brought up to current, patched releases.
Search now understands wildcards (*) and exact phrases in quotes, searches globally across all folders — including subfolders with content of their own and across every server in a cluster — and the tag filter offers the tags that actually exist. Hits through a tag move up the ranking, and search terms with a hyphen are found reliably.
In the online editor (ONLYOFFICE and Euro-Office) earlier versions can be restored straight from the version history; avatar, recent files and creating new documents are wired in. A read-only mode for the document server can be switched on by configuration, and the JWT secret is managed in the admin preferences.
For administrators: subgroups are created right in the group editor, group lists show their members as a tooltip and load much faster, and subgroups take over the organisation of their parent group. The dashboard and the accounts menu can be hidden from organisation admins, the folder owner can be hidden in lists, and storage and cluster distribution are selectable in the web admin. The folder list loads noticeably faster, files can be dragged onto the recycle bin, and the file list sorts numbers the way people read them.
Anyone migrating from Alfresco now also brings over interrupted permission inheritance, profile pictures and departments; each workspace becomes an organisation with the site managers as its administrators, and the nightly runs retry a failed analysis instead of losing the night. The Android app gains a recycle bin and version-based synchronisation, and the desktop client now speaks Hindi and Thai as well.
Partner programme for GDPR cloud storage: margin from the first licence, no joining fee
If you are a system house, IT service provider or managed service provider reselling cloud storage, you know the hurdles: partner tiers you have to climb, certifications at your own expense, minimum volumes — and you only learn the terms once you have qualified. For smaller partners the sums often do not work before they have even started.
Our partner programme begins differently. There is no joining fee, no minimum volume and no certification cost. The volume discount applies from the very first licence and grows with your volume — not from some tier you have to reach over a year first. You get the price list and the margin table before the contract, not after. The margin runs to up to 50% on every licence, and you set your own end-customer price.
Three routes, depending on how much you want to keep in your own hands. With reselling you buy Business cloud licences at the partner price and invoice your customer yourself — pricing, contract and billing stay with you. With white label the web portal, the apps and the system e-mails carry your logo, your colours and your domain; PowerFolder runs behind it, either in our cloud or in your own data centre. If you would rather not handle billing or first-level support, you refer the customer to us and receive a recurring commission for as long as the contract runs.
The market is writing your sales pitch. Your customers are asking for GDPR-compliant cloud storage, for servers in Germany, and for a contracting party outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. That is exactly what you are selling: data centres exclusively in Germany, ISO 27001 certified, with the Art. 28 GDPR processing agreement as part of the contract. Plus sync and share, share links with passwords and expiry dates, Office editing in the browser, the Outlook add-in, and clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android.
Cloud storage is not a one-off sale. It is a contract that runs every month, and you earn from it for as long as the customer stays with you. Technical second-level support comes straight from the manufacturer in Monheim am Rhein, in German, and PowerFolder has been in production at more than 1,500 organisations since 2007. Not a product you have to explain to your customers.
Tell us briefly who your customers are and which model interests you — we will come back within two working days with terms, price list and demo access. Become a partner · See the programme in detail
Our new homepage is live
As of today you reach us through a completely new look. The new homepage is faster, more clearly structured and at home on every screen — from a phone to a large monitor.
We rebuilt the site from the ground up: editions laid out side by side, a tidy download area, transparent pricing and this activity feed that gathers releases, security notices and company news in one place. Everything remains available in both German and English.
Have a look around — and tell us what you notice. Feedback is very welcome.
SharePoint 2016 and 2019 are out of support — the Microsoft cloud is not the only way out
Extended support for SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 ended on 14 July 2026. No more security updates, no patches, no support. Office Online Server follows on 31 December 2026 — taking with it the browser-based editing of Office documents that many organisations built directly on top of it.
Microsoft offers two routes: the SharePoint Subscription Edition in your own data centre, or Microsoft 365 in the cloud. Both carry a cost that is not only measured in licence fees. The Subscription Edition means a migration, a subscription, and running everything yourself as before. The cloud route means your content moves within reach of the US CLOUD Act — and since the Schrems II ruling that is not a formality for public authorities, universities and regulated industries, but a question you have to answer to your legal supervision.
There is a third route, and it is less work than its reputation suggests. Most of the fear around changing platforms concerns things that do not actually change. Sign-in stays: in your own data centre PowerFolder attaches to the same Active Directory, LDAP, SAML or Kerberos that SharePoint draws on today, and roles and organisational units keep coming from the directory. Office documents are still edited in the browser, through the ONLYOFFICE integration, together and in real time — precisely the capability that disappears with Office Online Server. The route through Outlook stays: the add-in replaces the attachment with a link carrying a password, an expiry date and a download limit. And anyone who mounted folders as a drive gets that back over WebDAV.
What changes is the location. Your content sits either on your own hardware behind your firewall, or in ISO 27001 certified data centres in Germany, with a German contracting party. The Art. 28 GDPR processing agreement is part of the contract, with no separate signature. Every file action lands in a granular audit log that can be kept audit-proof and handed to a SIEM — which a public tender usually requires anyway.
The move runs in waves, not over a weekend. What works: first take stock of where the data and the workflows actually live; then run a pilot with a single team; import the accounts in bulk via CSV, Active Directory or LDAP; then department by department. The old routes are closed only once the new one carries the load. A state ministry with 2,400 staff replaced SharePoint Online this way and was in production after six weeks.
The deadline is fixed; the direction is not. Three ways to try it: download the Community Edition and start on your own hardware — free forever for up to 50 users, no licence key. Start in the cloud if you would rather not run it yourself — servers in Germany, 30 days to try with no payment details. Or discuss your migration if you want to know what this looks like for your environment — we will work it through with you.
PowerFolder 28: tags, joining on request and a big step for Android
Version 28 is final. New, and by far the most visible change day to day: files and folders can be tagged — in the web portal, without rebuilding the folder structure. A document can belong to a project, a customer and a year at the same time instead of being filed three times. Tags are shared by everyone in a folder and sit right in the file list.
Search follows suit: filters by tag, period, size, file type and phrase, fuzzy matching for typos, several tags combined — and the search runs across all folders in parallel rather than one after another.
The second big arrival: folders you can ask to join. People who are not members yet find moderated folders through a filter of their own — only the name and description are visible, never the contents — and send a join request with a short comment. The people in charge get an e-mail with a direct link, assign the requester to existing groups and approve or decline, each with a reason. It replaces the round-robin e-mails people send today looking for the right contact.
Nested groups map grown organisational structures one to one at last. The password change and reset pages were hardened against account enumeration and automated attempts.
The Android app takes its biggest step in a long while: a grid view for folders and files, full-text search now on mobile too, a recycle bin for restoring deleted files, and protection against screenshots and screen recording — which matters wherever documents must not leave the device. Add noticeably better behaviour offline and on weak mobile networks, a reworked document viewer, and a sensible default sort order: folders first, then files.
Anyone migrating from Alfresco will find a complete toolset: folders, permissions, groups and profile data move across via CMIS, the Alfresco tags come with them, and titles and descriptions can be turned into tags. Individual folders can be taken over read-only where that is wanted. Add delta runs, a daily schedule, automatic reconciliation and a migration dashboard of its own.
Service pack 3 of the 26 series contains a security update and nothing else — no feature changes. We recommend that every installation on the 26 series updates promptly. Build 26.3.100 is available for Linux and Windows; customers with a maintenance agreement can request further detail through support.
PowerFolder 27.3: folders as network drives, Argon2id, OpenDocument
You can now publish PowerFolder folders as an SMB/Samba/CIFS share, with the existing PowerFolder permissions still applying. Passwords are hashed with Argon2id by default, and existing SHA-256 hashes migrate automatically at the next successful login. The online editor creates new documents as ODT, ODS or ODP; the News page has become an activity feed with bulk restore for deleted files, and a global file search now spans every top-level folder.
Full-text search with OCR — and a licence built into the Community Edition
Service packs 26.2 and 27.2 search inside document contents, including text recognition in images and scanned PDFs, indexed in the background and sparing on resources. They add a sharing dialog for sub-folders that shows inherited permissions, help tooltips throughout the web interface, and protection against automated sign-ups. The same delivery gives the PowerFolder Community Edition a built-in licence for up to 50 users.
PowerFolder 26.1 and 27.0: login history and sub-folder sharing
Version 26.1 shows your recent logins in the web interface, redesigns the device overview and lets you create WebDAV tokens under My Account / Devices; shared folders of expired accounts can be locked automatically. In parallel, version 27.0 introduces sharing of individual sub-folders as a beta feature — a shared sub-folder appears at the recipient as a top-level folder — and splits the folder list into My Folders and Shared Folders. For production use the release notes for 27.0 still recommend version 26.x.
2025
PowerFolder 26: restore top-level folders from the recycle bin
Administrators and users can restore top-level folders straight from the recycle bin for the first time. The version supports ONLYOFFICE Document Server 9.1.x and 9.2.x, shows lock and editing status in the web interface, and extends registration with address, telephone and note fields as well as protection against self-activation by e-mail domain.
PowerFolder 23.3: Content Security Policy and faster login
Version 23.3 arrived three weeks after 23.2 as a service pack. It protects the web portal with a Content Security Policy against cross-site scripting and clickjacking, renews the HARICA certificate of the desktop client and reworks token and session handling for WebDAV. Calculating used storage became faster, which speeds up login; invitations in large folder structures behave more reliably.
PowerFolder 23.4 enables Content Security Policy headers by default
The fourth service pack of the 23 series turns on Content Security Policy headers against cross-site scripting by default and adds two administrative API endpoints for reviewing and deleting expired organisations. Default folders can be created automatically at first login; the e-mail templates were reworked, and errors when downloading and copying file links in sub-directories and with password-protected links were fixed.
PowerFolder 23.2 with JSON Web Tokens and six new languages
Access to the Document Server is secured with JSON Web Tokens from version 23.2. Incomplete downloads are deleted automatically after 30 days, storage limits follow actual usage, and resellers see open invoices immediately after logging in. The interface is now also available in Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Dutch.
Ten years of BayernShare: 120,000 users at 24 institutions
In 2013 and 2014 the LRZ and the RRZE independently looked for a data-protection-compliant alternative to commercial providers and both chose PowerFolder; LRZ Sync+Share and FAUbox launched in autumn 2015 and merged into BayernShare in 2022. For the anniversary the computing centres report around 120,000 users at 24 Bavarian institutions, some 500 million files and roughly 600 terabytes of data, with 50 gigabytes of storage per account.
PowerFolder 23.1 with a setup assistant and steadier connections
Version 23.1 brings a setup assistant to the desktop client and improves the WebSocket connections so sessions drop less often. On the server the database structure is prepared for sub-folder sharing and the SAML integration was optimised. The iOS app is compatible with iOS 18; the Android app gained swipe menus for file actions and steadier uploads.
A European alternative while US data protection stays uncertain
After the change of course in United States policy, the future of the Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework is open. PowerFolder points out that all data is stored encrypted and GDPR-compliant on ISO-27001-certified servers in Germany — which makes companies independent of however US data protection law develops.
PowerFolder 22.3: reworked apps for Android and iOS
The mobile apps gain a swipe menu for navigation, a light and a dark mode, a simplified invitation flow and a warning before uploading when storage is running low. The language follows the device settings. In the server and desktop versions multi-factor authentication is now enabled by default, and storage migrations run at night only.
2024
PowerFolder 22 SP1: the Outlook add-in is back
Service pack 1 brings the Outlook add-in back. It turns attachments of any size into PowerFolder links, and you set the expiry, the number of downloads and the password protection yourself. The storage indicator in the web interface now sits next to the account button and points to an upgrade once usage passes 90 percent.
PowerFolder 22 with deeper Android integration
On Android you now open and save files directly in the Android file system, and sync icons show the state of synchronisation. The iOS app supports PDF export and dark mode. On the server, protection against denial-of-service attacks was extended — with and without federation — and the database layout optimised for large installations.
PowerFolder 21 SP1: WOPI integration ready for production
The WOPI integration with Collabora and ONLYOFFICE is released for production use from version 21 SP1, which also makes document editing available in the mobile apps. The Mac client supports ARM processors natively after moving to the Bellsoft JDK. Multi-factor authentication can be reset using recovery words.
PowerFolder 21.0: edit documents on Android as well
After mobile document editing arrived on iOS with version 20.4, you can create and edit texts, spreadsheets and presentations in the Android app from version 21.0. The server received security fixes, among them throttling of HTTP requests to guard against overload attacks, along with improvements to restoring documents and folders.
PowerFolder 20.4: mobile document editing on iOS
Through the ONLYOFFICE integration you create and edit texts, spreadsheets and presentations on iOS for the first time — together with others at the same time. In the web portal the folder list can be sorted into your own and shared folders, and co-users are notified automatically when the folder owner runs out of storage.
PowerFolder Cloud for members of the DFN
Members of the German National Research and Education Network can obtain PowerFolder as a hosted service instead of running it themselves. ISO-27001-certified data centres in Nuremberg, Falkenhagen and Hüllhorst are available as locations. The offer covers entire universities as well as individual institutes, connects to existing single sign-on and leaves your administrators full administrative access; existing on-premise installations can be migrated in full.
PowerFolder moves to new offices in Monheim am Rhein
In early 2024 PowerFolder moved from Meerbusch near Düsseldorf to the Rheinpromenade in Monheim am Rhein. The reasons were the city-wide fibre rollout, blanket public Wi-Fi and the economic conditions: in the 2023 municipal ranking of the German Economic Institute, Monheim came first among the 396 municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia.
2023
PowerFolder 20.1 with support for Android 13 and 14
Version 20 service pack 1 makes the Android app fully compatible with Android 13 and 14 and renews its interface. On the server, storage migration and the handling of folders within a federation were reworked, the internal Jetty web server updated and ONLYOFFICE 7.5 released. Login security can be configured per token, separately for clients, web and apps.
PowerFolder 20 with broader cover against the OWASP Top 10
The version number jumps from 19.2 straight to 20. The release adds two further security frameworks against cross-site scripting and authorisation flaws, together with measures against the OWASP Top 10: stricter input validation, parameterised database queries, extended authentication, role-based access control, output encoding and alerts from real-time monitoring.
A new partner programme for PowerFolder Drive
After taking over TERRA Drive from WORTMANN AG in September 2022 and renaming it PowerFolder Drive, a new partner programme starts. Sales partners move their customers into cloud operation through the multi-tenant platform and receive purchase prices with new discount tiers, an overview of their end customers and free consultations on pricing, technology and sales.
PowerFolder 19.0 puts ChatGPT into the document editor
Version 19.0 embeds ChatGPT in the document editor, where the assistant helps with writing, revising, researching, translating and explaining text. Large folder lists display faster, and QR code links open a file list instead of a ZIP download. The client supports macOS on M1 and M2 chips and the current Thunderbird version as an add-on.
PowerFolder 18.3 with multi-factor authentication
From version 18.3 you can secure login with multi-factor authentication, provided your administration enables it; the TOTP methods Google Authenticator and Authy are supported. The Thunderbird add-on was adapted to current versions of the mail client — it uploads large attachments to the cloud automatically and replaces them with download links.
2021
PowerFolder is not affected by the Log4j flaw CVE-2021-44228
On 15 December 2021 the German Federal Office for Information Security raised its highest warning level over Log4Shell: the affected Log4j versions 2.0-beta9 to 2.14.1 allow servers to be taken over remotely. PowerFolder is not affected, because the platform does not use Log4j but the logging mechanism implemented natively in Java. The partner product ONLYOFFICE Docs is not affected either.
PowerFolder 16.6 with a Thunderbird add-on
Version 16.6 brings the Thunderbird plugin into the client: you send large mail attachments with it and synchronise data between the mail program and cloud storage. Accounts can also be moved between organisations. Fixes cover multiple invitations from the web interface, upload forms and the LDAP configuration.
Free cloud access for schools after the DSK decision
The German data protection conference concluded by nine votes to eight that Microsoft Office 365 cannot be used in a data-protection-compliant way, criticising unclear responsibilities and transfers that cannot be verified. PowerFolder responded by offering secondary schools free cloud access with 50 GB of storage, integrated online editors and storage on ISO-27001-certified servers in Germany.