Best Self Hosted Alternatives to PeerTube

Friendica is a decentralized social networking and communications platform you can run on your own server. It connects to the wider Fediverse, enabling interaction across multiple compatible networks while keeping control over your data and privacy.

Key Features

• Federation with other networks via ActivityPub and diaspora* (and legacy compatibility such as OStatus)
• Fine-grained privacy controls, including access lists per post and private group conversations
• Social features including posts with edits, comments, reactions (like/dislike), and direct messaging
• Events and profiles with public and private aspects
• Photo sharing with audience restrictions
• Content ingestion via RSS/Atom feeds and support for additional integrations through plugins
• Optional content expiration and personal data export

Use Cases

• Hosting a personal or community social network that federates with the broader Fediverse
• Privacy-focused group communication for clubs, NGOs, or teams using access-controlled spaces
• Aggregating blogs and feeds into a social stream while publishing to a federated network

Friendica is a practical choice for users who want a familiar social networking experience while remaining interoperable with other federated platforms. Its plugin and theme ecosystem makes it adaptable for personal sites, families, and small communities.

Hyphanet (also known as Freenet) is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication and publishing. It provides a distributed, encrypted, decentralized datastore that applications and sites can run on top of without relying on centralized servers.

Key Features

• Encrypted, decentralized datastore for storing and retrieving content in a censorship-resistant way
• Plugin ecosystem enabling applications such as forums, microblogging, blogging, and media sharing
• Supports different network modes, including global participation (Opennet) and more private friend-to-friend connectivity
• Designed to improve privacy by minimizing reliance on centralized infrastructure and authorities
• Can be extended with tools intended to bridge disconnected networks via offline transfer workflows (e.g., sneakernet-style sharing)

Use Cases

• Publishing websites and content that is difficult to censor or take down
• Private communities and communication apps (forums, microblogging) built on decentralized storage
• Resilient information sharing in constrained or disrupted network environments

Limitations and Considerations

• Peer-to-peer systems can have higher latency and less predictable performance than centralized services
• Private friend-to-friend usage requires establishing trusted connections, which can reduce ease of onboarding

Hyphanet is suited to users who need privacy-preserving publishing and communication backed by decentralized storage. Its plugin-based approach enables a range of community and media applications while keeping infrastructure decentralized.

Loops is an open-source, federated short-video social platform designed to let communities host and share short-form video content while connecting across the Fediverse. It provides a creator-focused experience without ads and includes APIs and deployment tooling for self-hosting.

Key Features

• ActivityPub-based federation, enabling instances to interact with other Fediverse services
• Short-form video upload, transcoding-ready workflows and playback optimized for mobile and web
• Web UI built with a Vue frontend and a PHP backend; server-side templates use Blade
• Official API surface and documentation for integrations and client apps
• Docker-friendly deployment artifacts and support for CDN/object storage to serve large media

Use Cases

• Run a community-owned short-video platform for niche communities or interest groups
• Provide creators a federated alternative to centralized short-video services without advertising
• Integrate with Fediverse tools and instances to expand reach across ActivityPub networks

Limitations and Considerations

• Video-heavy workloads require proper object storage and CDN configuration for performance and cost efficiency
• As an open beta project, some features or integrations may be incomplete or subject to change
• Instance administrators are responsible for moderation policies and handling federated content

Loops offers a federated, privacy-conscious alternative to mainstream short-video services, focused on community control and extensibility. It is suitable for teams and communities willing to operate the required media infrastructure and moderation responsibilities.

Socialhome is a federated, self-hosted social networking platform that enables users to create profiles, publish content, and federate with other instances. It supports decentralized social networking with cross-instance interactions and is designed to run on self-hosted infrastructure. It uses a modern stack with a Django backend and a Vue-based frontend, and supports common database and cache layers for scalable deployments. The project is open source under AGPLv3 and includes community-facing documentation and development guidance. (libreselfhosted.com)

Key Features

• Federated and decentralized profiles across instances using ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols.
• Content authored in Markdown with optional HTML/JS/CSS for trusted users.
• Vue-based frontend paired with a Django backend for a modern, responsive UI.
• Self-hosted deployment with Docker, backed by PostgreSQL and Redis for data storage and caching.
• Open-source under AGPLv3 with ongoing community development and documentation.
• API routes integration and a Vue-based frontend testing workflow. (libreselfhosted.com)

Use Cases

• Run a federated community or organization that connects with other social-networking instances across the federation.
• Host your own personal or professional profile hub that interoperates with the wider federated network through ActivityPub. (libreselfhosted.com)

Limitations and Considerations

• The project is actively evolving; the frontend UI may lack some features and user experience polish. (socialhome.readthedocs.io)
• Migration and issue tracking have historically spanned multiple hosting platforms (GitLab to Codeberg), which can affect access to historical issues and discussions. (socialhome.readthedocs.io)

CONCLUSION: Socialhome provides a federated, self-hosted social network capability with a Django backend and Vue frontend, designed for decentralized profiles and cross-network federation via ActivityPub and Diaspora. It offers a Google-like demo path and an actively developed open-source project with community support. (socialhome.network)