ONLYOFFICE DocSpace Free Plan: 2GB Limits, Rooms, Collaboration and Per-Admin Pricing

His review is enthusiastic. The headline claims it made him "forget about the original." It's still worth checking what the free plan actually includes, where it stops, and which part of the pricing is easy to misread.

What DocSpace actually is​

ONLYOFFICE doesn't sell DocSpace as a plain web office suite. The company describes it as a document collaboration platform organized around "rooms," which are spaces with preset permissions. The three editors people know from Office are part of it:

• Document Editor for .docx, .odt and other text formats
• Spreadsheet Editor for .xlsx, .ods and similar formats
• Presentation Editor for .pptx, .odp and other slide formats
• A PDF Editor, Form Creator and Diagram Viewer for .vsdx files

ONLYOFFICE's help documentation says DocSpace can also handle forms, ebooks, Markdown files and multimedia viewing. It also lists AI agent features and developer tools such as webhooks and API keys.

In the document editor, Carrasqueira found the usual formatting tools plus images, tables, shapes, charts, headers and footers, text boxes and drop caps. He spends most of his time in the spreadsheet editor, where he imports large CSV datasets and turns them into sortable, filterable tables. He says many free tools he has tried over the years couldn't do that reliably. Templates are available in all the editors.

That's one person's workflow, not a benchmark. Carrasqueira himself says Microsoft's apps have advanced features some workflows depend on. The evidence here doesn't show feature parity with Microsoft 365 or perfect fidelity with complex Office files.

Section summary: DocSpace gives you browser versions of ONLYOFFICE's document, spreadsheet and presentation editors, plus PDF and form tools, inside a room-based workspace.

Rooms: the part that confuses Office users​

Rooms are the core of the product, and they aren't folders. In a room, you set permissions once for everything inside it instead of document by document. Beyond the three types in the XDA piece, the platform lists five main room types:

• Public rooms. You share files with outside people through links, and the invited people don't need to register to be able to view the shared content. Carrasqueira says public-room visitors can also edit and comment. ONLYOFFICE's help center frames public links mainly around viewing, so what a visitor can do depends on how the room and its links are set up.
• Collaboration rooms. These are for real-time co-authoring with team members. ONLYOFFICE's documentation lists real-time and paragraph-locking co-editing, comments, tracked changes, chat and video calls inside the editors, and version history.
• Form-filling rooms. Form-filling rooms handle PDF forms and allow you to easily collect and analyze responses in one place.
• Custom rooms and Virtual Data Rooms. Virtual data rooms (VDR) are equipped with additional security options, like watermarks and file lifetime settings. ONLYOFFICE's plan comparison shows these room types on the free Startup tier too, but the 12-room cap still applies.

The account model​

Carrasqueira points out something Microsoft 365 and Google users may not expect. If you want to see who is editing, you invite collaborators into your DocSpace. They don't each create their own separate space. He says one email address can belong to several DocSpaces.

ONLYOFFICE's help center explains why this matters. It defines five user types:

• Guests can only work in rooms they're invited to.
• Users can create and edit files but can't create rooms.
• Room admins, DocSpace admins and the Owner are the only ones who can create and manage rooms. These are the paid account types on Business plans.

So on a free space, your invited collaborators can work in your rooms, but they can't set up their own.

Section summary: Rooms set sharing rules once for a whole workspace. Public links work for people without accounts, but read the permission settings before you assume visitors can edit.

What's free, and where the pricing gets tricky​

This is where our research adds the most. ONLYOFFICE's pricing page lists the free Startup plan as Up to 3 admins · Unlimited users · Unlimited guests · Up to 12 rooms · 2 GB of file storage · Support for the ONLYOFFICE community. That matches the 12 rooms and 2 GB in XDA's piece. The plan comparison lists storage as "2 GB per space," so the whole DocSpace shares 2 GB. That backs up Carrasqueira's point that the storage is split among everyone you invite.

The paid tier needs a correction. XDA describes it as starting at $20 a month for 250 GB. The official page lists the Business plan at $30 · $20 · Per admin per month, with Unlimited rooms · 250 GB per admin · Branding and customization · SSO · 2 backups per month · Data recovery. In other words:

• The $20 is per admin, per month. It's a discount from $30, and the page labels it a limited-time offer.
• The storage is 250 GB per admin, not one flat 250 GB bucket.
• Regular users and guests don't cost anything. You pay for the people who manage rooms.

A team with three room managers would pay three seats, not one. On the other hand, a big group of editors under one admin costs no more than a single seat.

The free tier has already changed once​

When DocSpace launched, the free plan was tighter. In 2023, Make Tech Easier reported that the free plan limits you to 2 GB of storage, 1 admin, 2 power users, and up to 12 rooms. Beebom reported that the Business plan usually costs $30 per admin/ power user, but again, the company is giving a limited-time offer for $15 per admin/power user. Today the free tier is more generous on admins and the paid tier costs more, and the "limited-time" label is still there. The takeaway: this vendor's plan terms move, so check the live pricing page before you build a workflow around a limit.

Two more details are useful:

• Schools and nonprofits. ONLYOFFICE says organizations in these groups can create free cloud doc space for your school or non-profit organization, get 2 GB of storage and up to 20 admin accounts.
• Self-hosting. Asked whether a self-hosted DocSpace exists, ONLYOFFICE answers Yes, you can download it here. ONLYOFFICE's own write-up on DEV Community gives server requirements of at least a 4-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and 40 GB of free disk space. That's fine for a homelab or IT department, but not a casual Saturday project.

Section summary: Free means 3 admins, unlimited users and guests, 12 rooms and 2 GB shared across the whole space. Paid Business pricing is charged per admin, and the storage is per admin too.

Browser versus desktop: two different products​

Don't mix DocSpace up with ONLYOFFICE's desktop app. ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is open source under AGPL v3. It runs on Windows, Linux and macOS and edits files stored locally without needing a constant internet connection. DocSpace is a hosted cloud workspace.

The two do connect. When you link the desktop app to a cloud such as DocSpace, you get co-editing, review, comments and chat. ONLYOFFICE's documentation says some features, including Mail Merge in the Document Editor, only work online. This matches Carrasqueira's observation that real-time collaboration in the desktop app actually runs on the web tools behind the scenes.

For Windows users, a sensible setup is the desktop editors for private, offline work and DocSpace for sharing and co-editing.

Our take: who should switch and who shouldn't​

Carrasqueira also says Microsoft's own web apps feel "lackluster and unpolished" compared with ONLYOFFICE's. That's his opinion, not a measured comparison. Microsoft's free web apps come with a much larger free storage allowance through a personal Microsoft account and plug into Outlook, Teams and OneDrive in ways a 2 GB DocSpace can't. Is the ONLYOFFICE interface nicer to use? Maybe. Is it a replacement for a whole ecosystem? That depends on what else you rely on.

Based on the verified plan terms, here's who it suits:

• Good fit: solo writers, students, small clubs and freelancers who mostly work with text-heavy files. It's also good if you want to share with clients through links without asking them to sign up, or collect PDF form responses.
• Test first: anyone who depends on macros, complicated Excel models, tight layout fidelity in shared Word files, or heavy media. The 2 GB is shared across everyone in your space, so large media files will use it up quickly.

If you're considering the move, try this:

1. Create a free Startup space and set up one Collaboration room.
2. Upload your three most complicated real files: a heavily formatted document, a formula-heavy spreadsheet and a slide deck.
3. Edit them in the browser, export them back to Office formats, and open the results in Microsoft Office to check for layout drift.
4. Invite a collaborator as a User or Guest. Remember they can't create rooms.
5. Check your storage use against the 2 GB cap before you move your whole archive.

Bottom line: DocSpace is a real, free, browser-based office suite with collaboration features Microsoft's free web tier doesn't really focus on. The limits are clear, and the paid pricing is per admin, which matters more than XDA's summary suggests. Test it with your own files before you cancel anything.

What does your Office-alternative setup look like: LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE, or sticking with Microsoft 365? Tell us in the forums.