Infomaniak rents you its own Swiss suite and its own Swiss cloud. Pilae operates the open-source apps you choose, on your premises or on dedicated machines, under a contract that names the window, the restore tests and the exit.
- What they sell
- kSuite (Mail, kDrive, kChat, kMeet), web hosting and an OpenStack public cloud
- Where it runs
- Infomaniak's own datacentres in Switzerland
- Their certifications
- ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 50001, as stated on their site
- Whose software
- Developed by Infomaniak, or open source they host
- What we sell
- The open-source or source-available apps you pick, operated for you
- Where ours runs
- Your premises, any of 12 Pilae Cloud regions (six in Switzerland and the EU), hybrid or air-gapped
What each one actually covers
Thirteen things an open-source estate needs done. Their column is filled in from www.infomaniak.com.
| Capability | Infomaniak | Pilae |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy | ||
| One-click deploy from a curated cataloguePick the app, name the users, and it is sized, provisioned and running. | Partly | Yes |
| Migration onto the platform, run for youYour data out of the system it is in today, rehearsed before it is cut over. | Partly | Yes |
| SSO and identity wired into each appKeycloak, Entra ID, Google Workspace or Okta, configured on the app itself. | Partly | Yes |
| Keep it current | ||
| Updates applied for you, not just announcedThe release is read, staged and applied. You are not the one doing it. | Partly | Yes |
| Per-app CVE and advisory trackingThe advisory, the affected version and the fix version, per app you run. | No | Yes |
| Changes land in a window you approvedYour timezone, your hours, agreed before anything is touched. | No | Yes |
| Staged and checked before productionThe upgrade runs somewhere safe first, and the checks have to pass. | No | Yes |
| Prove it | ||
| Restore drills, not just backupsThe backup is restored on a schedule, because an untested backup is a hope. | Partly | Yes |
| A record of every restoreWho restored what, from which file, into which service, and whether it worked. | No | Yes |
| A change log an auditor can readEvery action, the person who took it, the outcome, inside your perimeter. | No | Yes |
| See it | ||
| Monitoring and alerting on the appsNot just the host: the application, its checks, and someone who answers. | Partly | Yes |
| Logs and metrics exported to your stackOpenTelemetry, or straight into the SIEM your security team already runs. | No | Yes |
| Run it | ||
| An agent that operates the estate with youAsk for a change in words; it plans it, shows you, and waits for approval. | No | Yes |
Pilae vs Infomaniak, in words
A tick says whether something is covered. These say how.
| What is being compared | Infomaniak | Pilae |
|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | A subscription to their suite, or self-service cloud resources your team runs. | The applications themselves, deployed, patched, backed up and watched by Pilae engineers. |
| Which software | Infomaniak's own products — Mail, kDrive, kChat, kMeet — plus hosting for sites and CMSs. | Open-source or source-available apps such as Nextcloud, Mattermost, Keycloak, n8n and Open WebUI, each under its own published licence. |
| Running on your own servers | Their suite runs in their datacentres. Housing puts your hardware in their racks. | On your premises, in Pilae Cloud, hybrid or air-gapped. The same console and the same operations in each. |
| Identity | Accounts managed in their Manager, plus an Auth product for adding their login to your apps. | Each app wired to your directory, through Keycloak or Entra ID, as part of onboarding. |
| Proving a backup works | Swiss Backup and configurable database backups, run by you. | Daily encrypted offsite backups, and a restore test every month, recorded in the console. |
| When an update lands | The suite updates on Infomaniak's schedule. Instances you run update when you update them. | The Pilae Agent plans the change, waits for your approval, applies it in your window and records it. |
| Leaving | Mail and files export over standard protocols. Their public pages offer no self-hosted edition of the suite. | The same open-source apps run anywhere. Your data leaves in their native formats. |
You ask for the change. The agent does the work.
Pilae Agent runs inside your perimeter and proposes each change as a plan you read before it runs. Nothing lands without your approval, and every action goes into the same change log as ours.
“Point Nextcloud at our new mail server”
Reads the current value, writes the change, restarts the service and checks that mail still sends.
“Give the support team Mattermost, with two contractors as guests”
Creates the team and channels, wires staff sign-on to your directory, invites the contractors as guests limited to their channels, and records who has access.
Infomaniak alternatives by what you use it for
Infomaniak sells several different things, and Pilae replaces only some of them. Start from the one you use.
Web hosting, domains and WordPress. Pilae is not a web host. For a website, compare Swiss and European hosting providers; nothing on this page is an answer to that.
Email. Pilae is not a mail provider either. Keep your mailboxes where they are, or move them to a mail host of your choice; the apps Pilae operates send through whichever one you use.
kSuite: kDrive, kChat, kMeet and the calendar. This is where Pilae fits. Nextcloud for files and calendars, Mattermost for chat and Jitsi Meet for calls, operated for you and signed in through your directory.
Public Cloud instances your team runs. If what you want is compute to run yourself, compare Exoscale and Nine. If you want the apps on it deployed, patched and restore-tested for you, that is Pilae; VSHN is another Swiss answer, on a Kubernetes platform. Every option is side by side on one comparison page.
A Swiss suite, or open-source apps operated for you
Infomaniak is a serious Swiss company. It builds its own collaboration suite, runs its own datacentres in Switzerland and publishes its prices. If what you want is a hosted alternative to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, kSuite is a fair place to look.
The difference is whose software you end up depending on. kSuite is Infomaniak’s product, and it runs in Infomaniak’s datacentres. Their public pages offer no self-hosted edition to move in-house if your needs change. Pilae works the other way round. The apps are open source or source-available — Nextcloud, Mattermost, Keycloak, n8n, Open WebUI — so the software you depend on runs anywhere, and Pilae is the team that operates it for you.
What your contract includes
Deployment where you need it. On your own premises, in Pilae Cloud in any of 12 regions, six of them in Switzerland and the EU, hybrid, or air-gapped. Apps answer only on a private network, behind one hardened gate on port 443.
Operations with approval in the middle. The Pilae Agent plans each change, waits for your approval, applies it in your maintenance window and records it in the console.
Backups you can prove. Daily, encrypted, stored offsite in the country you choose, with a restore test every month recorded in the console. See backups.
A commitment in writing. 99.9% monthly availability with service credits on every plan, as set out in the SLA. Monitoring probes every 60 seconds, and alerts reach Pilae engineers around the clock.
Moving across
If you are leaving Google Drive or Microsoft 365 rather than Infomaniak, start with Google Drive to Nextcloud. For everything else, migration is delivered at a fixed price agreed before it starts.
Moving from Infomaniak
A migration is a service, not a support article. This is the sequence we run, and it is in the fixed price.
List what your teams use
Mailboxes, drives, chat channels, calendars, and which of them hold data you must keep.
Choose the open-source counterpart
Nextcloud for files and calendars, Mattermost for chat, Keycloak for identity, and the rest as needed.
Stand it up beside Infomaniak
On your premises or in Pilae Cloud, wired to your directory, with nothing switched off yet.
Move the data with a rehearsal
Once to learn the timings, once for real. The old service keeps running until every check passes.
Then we operate it
Monitoring, backups, monthly restore tests, approved changes in your window, all recorded.
Infomaniak still fits when
- You want a hosted office suite with a published per-user price and no operations contract to negotiate.
- You want a Swiss company that owns the datacentre, the hardware and the software in one chain.
- Your own engineers want self-service OpenStack instances, billed by the resource.
Everywhere else, Pilae
The moment the estate has to stay patched, stay proven and stay auditable without someone in your building doing it by hand, the comparison stops being close.