Host Baïkal without installing anything
A calendar and contacts server that speaks CalDAV and CardDAV: you set it up in the iPhone's own settings, not in yet another app.
Starting at €4.99/month
Introduction
Baïkal installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. Your own calendar and contacts server, in CalDAV and CardDAV, syncing natively with iPhone, Android, Thunderbird and Outlook — without going through Google or Apple. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Essentiel at €4.99/month incl. VAT — 2 GB of memory, against a theoretical minimum of 512 MB. Baïkal is a PHP application built on sabre/dav with a SQLite or MySQL database: it computes almost nothing. The memory goes to the PHP processes answering at the same time, because a household of four means a dozen devices polling the server at regular intervals. We would rather quote the plan that stays responsive at peak than the one that fits on paper.
Moving in from Google or iCloud goes through the standard formats: a calendar exports as .ics, an address book as .vcf, and you push them back in from a client such as Thunderbird, which uploads everything to Baïkal. The way out is identical — the point of a server that speaks an open protocol is precisely that nothing is held prisoner in it.
What managed hosting changes
CalDAV and CardDAV, with no in-house app
On iPhone, iPad and Mac the account is added in the native settings, under Other, as a CalDAV account and then a CardDAV account. On Android, DAVx5 opens calendars, contacts and tasks in one go. Thunderbird handles it natively, Outlook through CalDav Synchronizer.
Calendars, contacts and tasks in one account
Baïkal stores events, tasks and contact cards — VEVENT, VTODO and VCARD. Tasks show up in Reminders on iPhone and in Tasks.org on Android, with no extra software.
Several users, several calendars
The admin interface creates accounts and their calendars. A "family" or "on-call" calendar can be opened to several people, each of whom still keeps private calendars of their own.
Frugal, and synced by difference
Baïkal implements WebDAV incremental sync: a device does not download the whole calendar again, it only picks up what has changed since its last visit. That is what makes it bearable on a mobile data plan.
Why hand it over rather than install it
A household leaving Google Calendar
One shared calendar for joint appointments, one private calendar per person, and every phone configured once and for all in its own stock settings.
A three-person practice
A shared address book: a card edited on the assistant's machine is up to date on the phones before the meeting ends, with no export and no attachment.
A tradesperson booking appointments on the phone
A slot written down at a customer's place shows up on the office computer, and the quote is prepared that evening against the same calendar.
Someone living between an iPhone and Thunderbird
The same account is declared on both sides. No bridge, no proprietary add-on: both programs speak the protocol Baïkal implements.
An association whose committee changes every year
Accounts are created and removed from the admin interface, but the calendars and the address book stay. Handover is no longer about forwarding a spreadsheet.
A calendar and address book that stay in France
The instance runs in our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and the automatic backup kept for 14 days restores from the client area.
Frequently asked questions
On iPhone: Settings, Calendar, Accounts, Add Account, Other, then Add CalDAV Account with your server address and credentials. Repeat with Add CardDAV Account for contacts. On Android, the DAVx5 app does it all at once: one declaration opens calendars, contacts and tasks.
Yes, through the standard formats. Google Calendar exports one .ics file per calendar, Google Contacts a .vcf file. Those files import from a desktop client — Thunderbird does the job well — which then pushes them to Baïkal. Plan on moving calendar by calendar rather than all at once: it takes longer, but you see what arrives.
No, and that is deliberate: Baïkal is a server, not a client. Its web interface exists to create accounts, calendars and address books, nothing more. You read your calendar in the software you already use. If you want a calendar you can browse in a web page, Nextcloud is the one to look at.
Nothing on the server. You choose the application, fill in the two or three fields it asks for, and it goes online; the address and credentials arrive by email. The recommended plan for Baïkal is App Essentiel, at €4.99/month incl. VAT with 2 GB of memory. On the device side, the account still has to be declared once per phone.
Yes, they are part of the service. A self-hosted application left un-updated is a security risk, not a saving — and a calendar server is permanently exposed, since your devices query it all day long. Version upgrades are applied and checked by us, with a backup kept for 14 days.