Sideporch: a small, self-hosted team chat in one binary

A Sideporch channel with a thread open on the right: messages with reactions, a checklist and a poll.

Why Sideporch

Yours, and simple to run
One program and one data directory. No database server, no email server, nothing else to install. It runs on a small VPS, a home server or an ARM board.
Familiar
Channels, threads, mentions, reactions, search and notifications work the way people know from Slack, and you can bring your Slack history along.
Easy to back up and move
Everything lives in one directory. Download a complete backup from the browser, or have Sideporch write one every day.
Works with your tools
Monitors, CI and bots post through Slack-compatible webhooks, so tools like Gatus and Grafana work unchanged. Automations in Lua do the rest.

Try it

With Docker:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -v sideporch:/data ghcr.io/niklas-heer/sideporch

Or with Homebrew on macOS and Linux:

brew install niklas-heer/tap/sideporch
sideporch

Open http://localhost:8080. The first person to open it creates the admin account, then invites everyone else with a link; nobody needs an email address. The README covers running it for real.

A #deploys channel with Gatus alerts from a webhook, a Mermaid diagram and an approval automation. — Webhooks, diagrams and approvals in one channel.

The automation editor with a Lua script. — Automations in Lua, written in the browser.

Sideporch on two phones. — Installs like an app on phones.

Why Sideporch

Yours, and simple to run

Familiar

Easy to back up and move

Works with your tools

Try it