Authored by Rex Huang, Director at Synology Enterprise Application Group behind solutions such as Synology Drive, Office, MailPlus, Calendar, and Chat.
It’s been ten years since we first released what would become Synology Office. Back in 2015, the package launched as Spreadsheet, a real-time collaborative spreadsheet tool. As part of DSM 6.0, we soon added documents and then slides, and the suite evolved into what you know today as Synology Office.
Since then, we’ve been steadily adding capabilities: new formulas, pivot tables, APIs, AI integration, and dozens of smaller enhancements. Through it all, we’ve stayed true to the original promise: deliver all the essentials, privately, and without per-user licensing.
What are the essentials?
Before Synology employees moved to our in-house solution, we relied on on-prem Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. They were convenient, but they meant either entrusting data to external services or dealing with messy file-sharing workflows. Costs also added up quickly as the company expanded. So we asked ourselves:
“Synology customers value data privacy, but we’re relying on public cloud services for our own data. If we can’t even make the switch ourselves, how can our customers?”
Spreadsheet, and later Synology Office, were first adopted by our engineering teams. Even in their early versions, they were more than adequate for day-to-day reports, progress tracking, and moderate data analysis tasks. Easy sharing, live collaborative editing (even for encrypted files), and a web-based interface made them simple to roll out and required no additional IT deployment.
Keep your data private
For teams, organizations, or even families looking to collaborate, Synology Office covers all the essentials and more, packaged in a fully on-premises solution. Your data lives in that lightly humming box or rack, neatly tucked away wherever you choose to place it. It’s yours, and only you decide where it goes for backup, sharing, or anything else.
This philosophy extends to AI as well. Synology Office now offers built-in generative AI features, but they are completely optional. If you don’t trust external AI services, or can’t use them due to regulations, you can direct your AI workloads to any OpenAI-compatible system instead.
Other capabilities, such as Synology Drive’s OCR (optical character recognition) and STT (speech-to-text), run privately on your own devices. On top of that, de-identification techniques help strip potentially sensitive PII before anything leaves your system.
It’s no surprise that many Synology Office deployments are found in government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare providers, and even major aerospace firms, where data privacy is non-negotiable.
Everyone gets access
Not every organization wants, or is able, to license a full productivity suite for every single employee, especially those who only need occasional access. We see this a lot in manufacturing environments: some staff may not need to create slides or spreadsheets, but they do need to read documentation, training materials, or internal announcements.
In many cost-conscious organizations, those employees simply don’t get licenses. That slows things down and sometimes prevents critical information from reaching the right people.
Organizations that deploy Synology storage are often pleasantly surprised to discover that Synology Drive and Office are free to use for as many users as they need. That means everyone can have an account and access the files they need, without worrying about seat counts.
It’s only going to get better
Over the past decade, Synology Office—together with Synology Drive—has grown to serve more than 18 million unique users. We’re proud of that milestone and incredibly grateful for the support along the way.
And we’re nowhere near done. Synology Drive and Office will soon gain more convenient semantic search capabilities. Instead of trying to remember exact filenames or specific phrases, you’ll be able to describe what you’re looking for in natural language.
Internally, this has already been a lifesaver for shared folders used by international teams that don’t always follow a single naming language, and for tracking down specific images or videos among the millions of event photos, web assets, and renders our marketing and design teams have produced over the years.
In 2026, we’ll also be welcoming two new members to the Synology Office Suite: Synology ChatPlus and Synology Meet. Completely redesigned from the ground up, this duo will deliver powerful on-premises instant messaging, calls, and conferencing, enhanced with private AI integration. Altogether, Synology’s Office Suite is shaping up to be an increasingly viable, all-in-one solution that you can host privately to maintain data ownership and get away from constantly fluctuating (rising) prices.
If you’ve been using Synology Office, we’re always happy to hear your suggestions and feedback.
If you haven’t checked it out recently, now is a great time to give it another try. We’ve made massive improvements over the past decade. For business deployments, feel free to reach out to our solutions team to schedule a demo or consultation.