I host, in Québec and on our own servers, the email, files and video meetings of organizations that no longer want their data to live at Google or Microsoft. It is a cooperative: you are a member, not a customer.
Who it’s for
We help small organizations, non-profits, cooperatives, collectives and freelancers who want to know where their email and files are, and to talk to a human when something is stuck.
We are not right for everyone, and we say so up front:
- An organization that sells personal data or does surveillance is not eligible, at any price.
- If you protect data that no one but you may hold, shared services are not the right form. A dedicated machine, encrypted with a key that you keep, or simple consulting suits you better. Write to us: we will tell you.
What runs today
Everything below works in production, now, for four communities. Each line carries a label: in service means it runs; coming means we are working on it and it is not for sale.
The work cloud
- Files in service: storage, sharing and sync on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Previous versions, trash bin, team folders.
- Online office suite in service: documents, spreadsheets and presentations edited together in the browser, compatible with Microsoft formats.
- Talk in service: chat, audio and video calls, screen sharing, iOS and Android apps.
- Calendar and contacts in service: shared calendars and address books on the CalDAV and CardDAV standards, so Thunderbird, Outlook, iOS and Android can read them.
- Notes, team pages, tasks, forms and polls in service: hosted with us, in exportable formats.
- Two-factor authentication in service: one-time codes and backup codes; audit log for administrators.
Email on your domain
- Mailboxes on your domain name in service: 5 GB per mailbox, unlimited aliases and forwarding, webmail and any email client.
- Domain authentication in service: SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up and monitored.
- Email password in service: each person changes their own, without going through us, from a dedicated page on our mail server.
- Migration from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace to be set up: possible, on quote, in an announced window.
Meetings
- Meeting video conferencing in service: rooms with presentation, polls, breakout groups, whiteboard and recording, for general assemblies and training sessions.
What is coming
- End-to-end encryption of folders coming: folders that we technically cannot read. In trial. We will not sell it until an outside party has certified that we are unable to read the content.
- Password vault for members coming: in service for ourselves, under observation before it is offered.
- Artificial intelligence on our hardware coming: models that run on our machines, without your texts leaving Québec. A single graphics card, with no redundancy: we use it, we do not sell it yet.
Where your data is
On machines that belong to us, in Québec, under Québec and Canadian law only. No American provider in the chain: a legal demand has to go through a court here. For you, the transfer of personal information outside Québec that Québec’s Law 25 requires you to assess does not take place in our hosting relationship.
Backups are daily and encrypted, on a machine separate from the main server. Encrypted copies are kept off site, in Europe; the keys that open them stay here.
We monetize nothing: no advertising, no profiling, no resale, no model training on your content. Never, at any tier.
What it costs
One service for everyone. The tier reflects your ability to pay, not what you receive: encryption, sovereignty and support are the same at every tier. You choose it yourself, with no proof required. The two top tiers fund access for organizations with fewer means, and that is written down.
Small budget
$60 per month Small collectives, few means.
Real cost
$150 per month What the service really costs us, published.
Contributor
$250 per month Mission-driven organization with means.
Business
$400 per month For-profit entity whose activity does not contradict ours.
Additional storage, at every tier: $18 per month per 100 GB.
Each tier includes 100 GB of storage, 5 GB per mailbox and one hour of human support per month. Prices in Canadian dollars, plus taxes. A dedicated machine, which you operate yourself, costs $500 to $800 per month, on quote.
This price list is a proposal in force until December 31, 2026. It will be reviewed in December by the governance circle, and any change is announced to you in writing, with notice.
Our commitments, without exaggeration
We do not write an availability percentage. A guaranteed rate assumes someone on call at all times and a standby machine, and today we have neither. Here is what we actually commit to.
- Service hours: Monday to Friday, business hours, Montréal time. Outside those hours, we act on major outages as best we can.
- First response: complete outage, the same day; degraded function, one business day; routine request, two business days.
- Maintenance: announced in advance, in the evening, with the expected duration.
- Backup: daily. You can lose at most one day of work.
- Incidents: we tell you, including when the fault is ours.
- Requests from authorities: we inform you, unless a court forbids us, and then we contest it.
Leaving
You leave whenever you want. Full export of your files, email, calendars and contacts, in standard formats, at no charge, within ten business days. No penalty, no minimum term.
That is what makes our commitments credible: if we break our word, you are not captive.
Back to where I wasConsulting, hosting
I also do consulting on my own account: audits of your installations, architecture advice, migration away from the big platforms, knowledge vaults shared with AI, and organizing team work online. For consulting, your data stays with you.
I also develop websites with our technology, and I host them on our servers, in Québec. The source of such a site is part of a knowledge vault: readable, portable text files, not a closed database. It is designed so that an AI can manage it easily: it reads and edits these files as readily as a person does. The vault follows Andy Matuschak’s evergreen notes method: each note carries a single, clearly named idea and is linked to the others. An AI finds the right context in it and can change one part without breaking the rest. This very page is an example: it is managed this way, from a note in our evergreen vault, and every change goes through my review. Who writes, who reviews and what gets published are set by protocols adapted to the needs of each site.
As long as the cooperative is not incorporated, I, Alain Lauzon, am the one who commits, in my own name.
My mission: to help people build together structures where each person carries part of the load and no one carries all of it. That is the principle of tensegrity. I work at it in four ways:
- developing our knowledge;
- using AI and knowledge vaults, personal and shared;
- creating online services that make all of this easier;
- experimenting and learning together, in real time.
I work only with organizations whose aims, that is, what they seek to accomplish, are in harmony with mine. That harmony cannot be read on a page: it is discerned in a first conversation, at no charge. If it is not there, I tell you, and I tell you why. If in doubt, write anyway.
My limits:
- What I refuse: the refusals written above, in Who it’s for, apply to consulting too.
- What I do not promise: legal advice; someone on call at all times.
- My capacity: I am alone, and today I give it five hours a week. For a serious mandate, I will be able to give it twenty hours or more within a few months.
Rate: on quote.
coming These aims and limits will also be published in a machine-readable format, which I am proposing as an open standard.
How we decide
With us, you are not a customer: you join the cooperative, you sit on it, you can object. Decisions are made by consent: we move forward by default, and a reasoned objection stops a decision until it is dealt with, with a written answer. It is neither a vote nor unanimity.
You can turn us down without giving a reason. We can turn you down too, and we say why.
Where the work stands, dated
As of October 13, 2026:
- Serveurs du Peuple is a solidarity cooperative in formation. The articles are not filed; the founding assembly is planned for fall 2026.
- The infrastructure runs and serves four communities. One person operates it today. Succession, key custody and a second operator, is under way: it is the first project.
- What is in service is in service; what is coming is coming. This page is dated because it ages.
Next step, if you are interested
The next step is a conversation, not a contract: one hour to understand what you have, what you protect and what needs to be migrated. We come out of it with a firm quote, or with a no from one side or the other.
- Write to info@serveursdupeuple.net.
- Add Alain Lauzon to your contacts (vCard).
- Read Le Guide des Serveurs du Peuple, our members’ public handbook (in French).