paquerette.eu

What It Is

Paquerette is a France-based open-source collaboration software provider for SMEs, associations, and independent professionals. Rather than positioning itself as a single SaaS product, it offers consulting, deployment, hosting, training, and tailored support around free software, open standards, and environmentally conscious hosting. Its website emphasizes that it is part of the cooperative and social-economy ecosystem, and states that it does not collect or resell personal data.

Core Features and Collaboration Capabilities

In terms of feature coverage, Paquerette is closer to a “hosted open-source collaboration suite” provider. Its offerings include Nextcloud for files, calendars, task synchronization, and collaboration; YesWiki for knowledge bases, website creation, collaborative editing, no-code forms, and data presentation; Mattermost for instant messaging, topic-based channels, private/public conversations, email notifications, and video conferencing integrations; and BigBlueButton for video meetings, recording, screen sharing, polls, and timers. It also provides email, Sympa mailing lists, and hosted applications such as Discourse, Humhub, Paheko, and Dolibarr. YesWiki explicitly supports fine-grained user and access permission management.

Pricing and Deployment

Pricing is mainly based on annual starting fees plus custom quotes as needed: YesWiki starts from 160€ HT/year, with customized versions from 300€ HT/year; Mattermost shared hosting starts from 100€ HT/year, while dedicated instances start from 400€ HT/year; BigBlueButton starts from 120€ HT/year or 600€ HT/year; email starts from 20€ HT/year, and hosted email from 100€ HT/year. General application hosting starts from 100€ HT/year for shared instances and 400€ HT/year for dedicated instances. Services are hosted on Hetzner or Paris-based Oasis21 servers, and Paquerette can also help customers set up their own hosting environment.

Pros and Cons

The strengths are a clear open-source orientation, coverage of the main collaboration and office-work scenarios, relatively low entry pricing, and support for needs assessment, training, and onboarding. This makes it suitable for organizations without a dedicated IT team but that still care about autonomy and control. The drawbacks are that the website does not disclose key enterprise procurement details such as free trials, payment methods, SLA, backup policies, security certifications, or API documentation. Many advanced requirements also require contacting the provider for a quote, so pricing transparency is limited.

Best Fit and Access from China

Paquerette is best suited to French-speaking or Europe-based associations, cooperatives, small businesses, and teams looking for an alternative to large commercial office suites. The website does not provide clear information about access from China, and since the services are deployed in Europe, performance, payment options, and language support should all be verified in practice. Domestic alternatives in China include Feishu, WeCom, and DingTalk; for those committed to an open-source approach, Nextcloud, Mattermost, OnlyOffice/Collabora, and local service providers are worth evaluating.