Alternatives to Smithereen
A self-hosted federated social network server with friends, walls and groups, using ActivityPub. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Smithereen
A self-hosted federated social network server with friends, walls and groups, using ActivityPub.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Smithereen.
Friendica
Federated social platform that bridges to Mastodon, diaspora*, email and RSS.
Friendica is a PHP platform with groups, events and photo albums that also bridges to diaspora*, email and RSS, though its interface is dated and dense.
Hubzilla
An open-source, self-hosted fediverse platform for social networking, publishing and collaboration with nomadic identity.
Hubzilla adds nomadic identity, files, calendars, wikis and fine access control to self-hosted social networking, which makes it more complex to run than Smithereen.
Mastodon
Federated microblogging server with no algorithmic feed.
Mastodon swaps friends, walls and groups for a chronological microblogging feed on a much larger ActivityPub network, under the AGPL-3.0 licence rather than public domain.
diaspora*
Decentralised social network built on independently run pods.
diaspora* uses aspects to control who sees each post, but it does not speak ActivityPub, so it does not federate with Mastodon or other fediverse servers.
Bonfire
An open-source, federated platform for building a community space that connects to the open social web.
Bonfire offers modular building blocks for community spaces on the open social web, with self-hosted or cooperative hosting, and suits organisations that want to govern their own space.
Streams
A self-hosted decentralised social server with nomadic identity and fine-grained permissions over who sees what.
Streams is a PHP server with nomadic identity and fine-grained permissions over who sees content, and its documentation lives mainly inside the repository.
Misskey
Feature-rich fediverse server with reactions, drive storage and theming.
Misskey provides custom reactions, a file drive and deep theming, but it is heavier to run and most of its documentation is in Japanese.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Lemmy
Federated link aggregator and discussion platform.
Mobilizon
A federated, open-source platform for creating, sharing and finding events and organising groups.
Pixelfed
Federated photo sharing platform with no ads or algorithm.
Mbin
A self-hosted federated content aggregator with voting, discussion threads and microblogging for the fediverse.
GoToSocial
A lightweight self-hosted ActivityPub social network server written in Go.
