Bonfire
An open-source, federated platform for building a community space that connects to the open social web.
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About Bonfire
Bonfire is software for running a community's own social space, combining building blocks for communicating and organising. It federates with the wider open social web, so members can connect beyond their own instance, and the community can govern it and leave when it chooses.
There are three routes: self-host it on your own infrastructure, use cooperative hosting, or co-design features with the project. A public test instance lets you try it before deciding. The project is open source with no ads or venture capital.
Strengths
- Federated with the open social web
- Modular building blocks for different community needs
- Self-hosted or cooperative hosting options
Limitations
- Self-hosting needs some sysadmin experience
- Smaller ecosystem than Mastodon
Details
- Pricing
- FreeSelf-hosting is free; cooperative hosting is also offered.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- The Bonfire contributors
- Platforms
- Web, Self-hosted
- How it runs
- Self-hosted, Hosted service
- Best suited for
- Communities and organisations that want a social space they govern themselves
- Categories
- Social networks
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Bonfire
Compare allSoftware that can replace Bonfire for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Hubzilla
An open-source, self-hosted fediverse platform for social networking, publishing and collaboration with nomadic identity.
Hubzilla offers an all-in-one self-hosted hub with nomadic identity, files, calendars, wikis and federated forums, though its many features make it more complex to run.
Friendica
Federated social platform that bridges to Mastodon, diaspora*, email and RSS.
Friendica is an AGPL-3.0 federated platform with groups, events and photo albums that bridges to Mastodon, diaspora*, email and RSS, but its interface is dated and dense.
Mastodon
Federated microblogging server with no algorithmic feed.
Mastodon has a larger ecosystem than Bonfire and chronological microblogging timelines, but focuses on microblogging rather than modular building blocks for different community needs.
Streams
A self-hosted decentralised social server with nomadic identity and fine-grained permissions over who sees what.
Streams is a self-hosted decentralised server with nomadic identity and fine-grained content permissions, requiring a PHP web server and documentation that lives mainly in the repository.
diaspora*
Decentralised social network built on independently run pods.
diaspora* runs on independent pods with Aspects for controlling post visibility, but it does not speak ActivityPub, so it does not federate with Mastodon.
Misskey
Feature-rich fediverse server with reactions, drive storage and theming.
Misskey is a feature-rich fediverse server with custom reactions, a file drive and per-instance theming, though it is heavier to run and documentation is mostly Japanese.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Mobilizon
A federated, open-source platform for creating, sharing and finding events and organising groups.
Lemmy
Federated link aggregator and discussion platform.
NodeBB
Open-source community forum software built on Node.js, self-hosted or on paid hosting.
PieFed
A self-hosted federated forum and link aggregator that works with Lemmy and the wider fediverse.
Gancio
A self-hosted shared event agenda for local communities, designed for small instances tied to a place.
Movim
A self-hostable web client for XMPP that combines chat, group rooms, news feeds and video calls.
