The customers we didn’t expect

When you build an office suite, you picture a certain kind of user. A team in a meeting room. A student writing an essay. An accountant deep in a spreadsheet. And yes, those people use ONLYOFFICE every day.

But over 16 years, something wonderful happened. Our tools ended up in places we never planned for, helping people whose work looks nothing like a typical office. Firefighters. Human rights lawyers. Food bank volunteers. Even a skate park crew.

So let’s take a tour of the customers we didn’t expect. These are the stories that remind us why we do this.

When rescue workers need documents too

Firefighters run toward danger. We didn’t think document editing would be part of that job. We were wrong.

The Abensberg Fire Department in Germany uses ONLYOFFICE Docs together with Nextcloud to manage the paperwork behind the heroics. Duty rosters, equipment lists, training schedules, incident reports – all of it needs to be stored centrally and edited by the right people. Instead of juggling scattered files, the team shares and updates everything from one secure place. When a call comes in, the last thing anyone wants is to hunt for a document.

It turns out that saving lives involves a surprising amount of coordination behind the scenes. We’re glad our editors help keep that part running smoothly.

Open source for activists

Some of our most moving stories come from organizations fighting for people who need help.

Equal Rights Beyond Borders works on human rights and refugee law, often handling deeply confidential case files. They chose ONLYOFFICE precisely because they can control their own data. For an organization defending legal rights, keeping documents private isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point.

In Vietnam, the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation uses ONLYOFFICE to support young people escaping trafficking and poverty. Their staff can focus on the mission instead of software licenses, working together on the documents that help vulnerable kids build safer futures.

These groups often run on tight budgets and even tighter privacy needs. Open-source, self-hosted tools give them power they couldn’t otherwise afford. That combination of freedom, security, and no cost barrier is exactly why they came to us.

Feeding people, one shared file at a time

Fighting hunger is logistics work. And logistics means documents.

The charitable foundation Food Bank used ONLYOFFICE to help coordinate a campaign that collected food worth 300,000 EUR. Behind that number are spreadsheets tracking donations, documents organizing volunteers, and plans keeping everyone aligned.

In Austria, Foodsharing Austria relies on ONLYOFFICE and Nextcloud to carry out a mission built entirely on sharing, namely rescuing surplus food before it goes to waste. And the Vegan in Leipzig project uses the same combination to keep its community workflows running smoothly.

None of these teams set out to become power users of an office suite. They just needed reliable tools that wouldn’t get in the way of doing good.

The places no one expected

Here’s where things get delightfully unusual.

A skate park. Yes, really. St. Skatepark Zuidlaren in the Netherlands uses ONLYOFFICE to organize its local spot for sports and community activities. Planning sessions, events, and coordination, all handled with the same editors a corporation might use for quarterly reports.

Then there’s the internet. An entire online meme community, GoodAnimemes, turned to ONLYOFFICE to keep its document workflows secure. Memes may be for fun, but running a large community still takes real organization.

Music lovers are covered too. ONLYOFFICE has helped organize music festivals in Germany, wrangling the countless schedules, contracts, and logistics that go into a live event. A sports society leaned on ONLYOFFICE to push through the challenges of the pandemic and keep its members connected.

Image source: u-run.fr

And let’s not forget the youth football club that used ONLYOFFICE to coordinate a distributed team of volunteer managers. Anyone who has tried to organize a group of volunteers knows it can feel harder than winning the match itself.

Serving whole cities and countries

Sometimes “unexpected” simply means far-reaching.

In Laos, government officials edit and collaborate on documents through ONLYOFFICE Docs, powering everyday administrative work at a national level. Across the Pacific, the University of French Polynesia made seamless online collaboration a reality for staff and students on a group of islands in the middle of the ocean.

Closer to some of our readers, the city of Hopewell, Virginia adopted ONLYOFFICE to enable remote work for 500 government employees when they suddenly needed it most.

And in Spain, the city council of Reus brought simple, powerful online editing to its public administration.

The city hall of Reus (The image by Josep Llauradó is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.1 ES)

From a small skate park to a national government, the same tools scale to fit. That flexibility is something we’re quietly proud of.

What all these stories have in common

Look closely, and a pattern appears. Fire departments, activists, food banks, festivals, city halls. None of them are “typical” office users. Yet they all needed the same core things:

• control over their data, especially when handling sensitive or confidential information;
• tools that fit their budget, whether they’re a global institution or a volunteer group;
• the freedom of open source, with no lock-in and no compromises;
• real collaboration that works across distances, devices, and teams.

That’s the quiet magic of building something open and universal. You create a tool for “everyone,” and then everyone shows up, including people you never pictured.

Built for everyone means everyone

When we started, our mission was simple: bring the most innovative office apps to everyone. We meant it as a promise. We didn’t fully grasp just how wide “everyone” would turn out to be.

Today, more than 21 million people use ONLYOFFICE. Some of them are exactly who we expected. Many of them are not, and those are the stories that make us smile the most. A firefighter updating a roster. A lawyer protecting a refugee’s case file. A volunteer sorting donated food. A skater planning the next event.

Each one proves the same point: good tools should serve any mission, big or small, ordinary or extraordinary.

So here’s our question for you: are you one of the customers we didn’t expect?

If ONLYOFFICE plays a surprising role in your work, community, or cause, we’d love to hear about it. You might just become our next favorite example of what “for everyone” really means. Tell us your story