Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Sapling (Kallidus)

ChiefOnboarding is a free, open-source employee onboarding platform designed to structure and automate the onboarding journey for new hires. It supports both Slack-based and web dashboard workflows and can be self-hosted or hosted by ChiefOnboarding from Europe.

Key Features

• Automatically provision user accounts and trigger webhooks, with ready-to-use integrations and custom webhook support
• Pre-boarding: create pages to welcome new hires before they start
• To-do items: track tasks and collect forms from new hires
• Resources: access knowledge bases and complete courses to accelerate ramp-up
• Sequences: drip-feed items over time or on completion of previous items
• Badges: reward progress to motivate new hires
• Introductions: connect new hires with colleagues
• Admin to-dos: collaborate with teammates on onboarding tasks
• Multilingual: supports English, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Turkish, French, Spanish, Japanese
• Timezones: per-hire timezone to avoid late-night messages
• Slack bot and dashboard: accessible via Slack or web; both can run standalone
• Customizable: branding, color schemes, logos, email templates, and domain
• Open-source and privacy: licensed under AGPLv3; allows self-hosting or hosted by us
• Deployment options: containerized via Docker; deployment options include Docker Hub, Heroku, Render, and Elestio

Use Cases

• Design and run repeatable onboarding journeys for remote or distributed teams using blueprint-based workflows with preboarding, to-dos, resources, and badges
• Accelerate IT/HR onboarding by provisioning accounts and triggering integrations automatically
• Support multilingual, timezone-aware onboarding for global teams

Conclusion

ChiefOnboarding offers a transparent, flexible onboarding platform with Slack and dashboard access, strong integration capabilities, and an open-source model. It enables teams to design and run onboarding journeys while retaining data control and customization.