Best Self-hosted Community & Social tools in 2026

Mastodon is an open-source, ActivityPub-compatible social network server for microblogging, offering federated timelines, moderation tools, media support, and APIs.

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Threads+7

Discourse is open-source forum software for community discussion, support, and knowledge sharing, with moderation tools, customization, and built-in chat.

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Flarum Cloud+11

Lila is the open source server behind lichess.org, providing real-time chess, puzzles, analysis, tournaments, teams, and community features via web and mobile clients.

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Chess.com

Lightweight, extensible forum platform built in PHP with a Mithril.js frontend, supporting MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/SQLite and an active extensions ecosystem.

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Flarum Cloud+8

Apache Answer is an open-source Q&A platform for community forums, help centers, and internal knowledge sharing with tagging, voting, and a plugin system.

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Stack Overflow+5

Apache Answer is a modern open-source Q&A platform for teams to build knowledge bases, forums, and help centers.

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Stack Overflow+9

NodeBB is a modern forum platform with real-time discussions, built-in chat, SSO options, plugins, and flexible theming, backed by Redis, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL.

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Discourse+14

PeerTube is a decentralized, ActivityPub-federated video hosting platform with live streaming, P2P WebRTC delivery, and customizable community-run instances.

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YouTube+8

Lemmy is a federated, self-hostable link aggregator and forum platform for creating Reddit-like communities with voting, comments, moderation tools, and ActivityPub feder...

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Reddit+3

Open-source federated social network built around independently run pods, privacy via Aspects, and standard social features; implemented in Ruby on Rails.

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Mastodon (mastodon.social)+6

Formbricks is an open-source Qualtrics alternative for creating in-app, web, link, and email surveys with targeting, segmentation, and built-in analysis.

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SurveyMonkey+10

Misskey is an open-source federated microblogging platform using ActivityPub, enabling communities to run their own social server and interact across the fediverse.

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Misskey+6

HeyForm is an open-source form builder for creating conversational surveys, quizzes, polls, and questionnaires with templates, logic, integrations, and analytics.

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Google Forms+18

Pixelfed is a free, open-source, ActivityPub-based photo sharing social network that federates with the Fediverse for decentralized social media.

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Instagram+7

Open-source intranet and enterprise social network for communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing with a modular, extensible design.

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Microsoft Yammer+13

Remark42 is a lightweight, privacy-focused self-hosted comment system with social/email login, moderation tools, notifications, and easy embedding for blogs and sites.

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Disqus+8

Isso is a lightweight, self-hosted Disqus alternative that adds a Markdown-based comment system to your website with a configurable JavaScript embed and SQLite storage.

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Disqus+8

WriteFreely is a clean, Markdown-based publishing platform for creating minimalist blogs and communities, with ActivityPub federation and low-resource Go deployment.

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Micro.blog+10

Open-source feedback portal to collect ideas, run feature voting, discuss requests, and prioritize product improvements with notifications, tags, and integrations.

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Canny+14

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation for running federated, secure real-time chat and collaboration on your own infrastructure.

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Element Matrix (Hosted)+19

Open-source platform for event management, online ticket sales, and attendee check-in with branded event pages, promo codes, analytics, and Stripe payouts.

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Eventbrite+18

Self-hosted trail catalog to plan routes, upload GPX/GPS tracks, add metadata, and search, filter, and share trails with optional federation.

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Ride with GPS+2

Misago is a modern, fast forum application built with Python, Django, and React, featuring moderation tools, permissions, private threads, polls, and API integrations.

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Discourse+12

BookWyrm is a federated social network to track reading, write reviews, share quotes, and discover books with communities via ActivityPub federation.

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Goodreads+5

Loomio is a collaborative decision-making tool for group discussions, proposals, and polls, helping teams make transparent decisions asynchronously with a clear record.

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Diligent Boards+16

Peergos is a peer-to-peer encrypted file storage and private social platform with fine-grained access control, capability links, and a web UI for secure sharing.

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Proton Drive+12

Open-source, self-hosted tool to collect, organize and prioritize customer feedback with roadmaps, sign-in, webhooks, and API.

Artalk is a lightweight, self-hosted comment system with a fast Go backend and a framework-agnostic JavaScript client for embedding comments on any site.

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Disqus+9

phpBB is an open-source forum (bulletin board) platform in PHP for building and managing community discussion boards with extensible theming and add-ons.

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Discourse+8

Indico is a web-based event management platform for meetings, lectures, workshops, and conferences, with workflows for registration, reviewing, and room booking.

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Cvent+14