A realtime chat server
Named channels, @mentions, replies, image paste and live fan-out — without the ads, the algorithm, or losing your history behind a paywall.
✦ Built for small communitiesWhere your community
Where your community
actually lives.
Real-time chat, threaded discussions and video rooms— one calm little home for your community. Self-hosted on a single box, no per-seat fees, no ads, no algorithms.
Free to start · No credit card required
One home, not ten tabs
Replace the pile of apps your community is scattered across
Most small communities end up juggling a chat app, a forum, a video tool, a docs site and a notifications service — each with its own login, its own bill, and its own silo of history. ForumChat folds them into one calm place you host yourself.
Discourse-style threads
Long-form discussions that stay put and stay searchable. Promote any chat message into a thread the moment it deserves a real conversation.
Built-in video rooms
Jump on a WebRTC call with screen share right inside your community. Nothing to install, no meeting links to schedule, no third-party room limits.
Projects, notes & pastes
Capture decisions, track issues and share long snippets next to the conversation that produced them — not in yet another tool nobody opens.
Your own AI assistant
An in-house assistant that answers in a thread, searches your community and runs on models you host — so prompts never leave your box and there's no usage bill.
A box you actually own
One small server, one database file. No per-seat pricing, no seat counting, no "your free workspace will be archived" email two years from now.
Everything in one place
Stop scattering your community across apps
Chat, forum, rooms and AI live in the same fast app — one login, one search, one home your members actually own.
Realtime chat channels
Public named channels with @mentions, replies, image paste and instant fan-out over NATS.
Forum threads
Long-form discussions that don't scroll away. Promote any chat message into a thread in one click.
Video rooms
Spin up a WebRTC room and jump on a call without leaving your community.
AI agents
@mention an agent — it opens a thread and answers with tools and your knowledge base.
Projects & issues
Track work with issues, checklists and attachments right next to the conversation.
Full-text search
Find any message or thread instantly with built-in SQLite FTS.
Roles & moderation
Admins, approval queues and bans with content cleanup — keep your space friendly without hiring a mod team.
Self-hosted & cheap
A single Go binary on SQLite — runs on the smallest box. Deploy in minutes, own every message.
A closer look
Everything your community needs, and nothing it doesn't
No feature soup and no enterprise dashboard — just the handful of things a living community actually uses every day, done carefully.
Chat that feels instant
Conversation is where a community comes alive, so chat is the centre of gravity here. Messages appear the instant they're sent — no refresh, no spinner — because every update streams straight to the page over a live connection. Type, paste an image, drop a file, reply with a quote, or forward something to another channel; it all lands immediately for everyone watching.
Channels keep different conversations from stepping on each other, unread dots quietly tell you where something new happened, and when a casual message turns into something worth keeping, one click promotes it into a forum thread so it doesn't scroll away forever.
A forum so good ideas don't scroll away
Chat is brilliant for the moment and terrible for memory. The built-in forum is the antidote: durable threads with flat, readable replies that stay findable months and years later. Decisions, plans, guides and announcements live here instead of evaporating in the scrollback.
Threads can be marked resolved, filtered, quoted and searched, and a new thread can announce itself back into chat so nobody misses it. It's the difference between a community that remembers and one that keeps re-asking the same questions.
Search that actually finds things
Everything you write is searchable the moment it's posted. A built-in full-text index returns exact matches instantly across chat, threads, posts, projects and more — no external search service to run.
When semantic search is switched on, results also include things that mean the same without using the same words, and the two are blended into one ranked list. Every hit links straight back to where it lives, so finding the answer is one query and one click away.
An assistant that lives in your community
The optional AI assistant isn't a bolt-on chatbot — it's a member of the space. @mention it and it opens a thread, answers with context from your own discussions, and can use tools to search or pull in what it needs. Multiple named assistants can each have their own personality and purpose.
Crucially, it runs on AI models you host. Your prompts and your community's knowledge never leave your server, and there's no metered API bill — the assistant is simply another part of the box you already own.
Meet face to face, nothing to install
Sometimes you just need to talk. Always-on video rooms let anyone hop on a call with camera, mic and screen share directly in the browser — no app download, no scheduling, no separate meeting tool.
Screen and camera show up as independent tiles so a presenter stays visible while sharing, and background blur keeps your messy room your business. It's the quick huddle your community needs, without leaving the community.
Notifications that respect your attention
Being reachable shouldn't mean being interrupted. Web push notifications let members keep up with mentions, new threads and other events from their phone or desktop — entirely opt-in, with per-event control over what's worth a buzz.
A digest mode batches everything into a single quiet update every few minutes or hours, so an active community never turns your pocket into a vibrating brick. You decide the cadence; it sticks to it.
Up and running fast
From zero to a living community in minutes
- 1
Create your space
Spin up your community — a chat channel and forum are ready the moment you sign up.
- 2
Invite your people
Open self-serve signup or share invite codes — you decide how members get in.
- 3
Talk, decide, ship
Chat in real time, capture decisions in threads, and meet in rooms — all searchable.
Yours, end to end
Your community, on your terms
When your community lives on someone else's platform, you're a tenant. The rules can change, the feed can be reordered, your history can be paywalled, and one policy update can wall off years of conversation. ForumChat takes the opposite bet: you host it, so it's yours.
All of it — every message, thread, file and account — sits in a single database and an uploads folder on a server you control. There's no telemetry phoning home, no analytics broker in the middle, and no third-party AI service reading your discussions. Backing up the whole thing is as simple as copying a file, and migrating away is just taking that file with you.
It's open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence, so you can read exactly what it does, change it, and trust that it isn't quietly working against you. No ads. No algorithm deciding who sees what. No account you can be locked out of by a company you've never spoken to.
Built for
Made for small communities
Clubs, hobbies & fandoms
Give your members a real home: channels to hang out, threads that stay put, and rooms to meet up.
Friends & local groups
A private corner of the internet for your circle, neighborhood or meetup. No ads, no algorithm, just your people.
Small teams & makers
Tiny teams and side-projects get chat, decisions and tracking in one place, without enterprise pricing.
Built to outlast the hype cycle
Boring technology, on purpose
No microservices to orchestrate, no JavaScript framework to keep alive, no database cluster to babysit. ForumChat is one small program that does a lot — the kind of software you can still run, and still understand, years from now.
- Single binaryThe whole server is one compiled program — copy it, run it, done.
- SQLite storageOne file holds your whole community. Trivial to back up, trivial to move.
- Server-rendered HTMLFast pages and live updates with no heavy front-end build to maintain.
- Runs on tiny hardwareHappy on a $5 VPS or a Raspberry Pi — a lightweight container image.
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)Read it, audit it, change it. The code is the contract.
- Deploy in minutesOne container command and your community is live — no pipeline, no cluster.
Build on it
Plug the outside world in — as a member
Connectors let any external program take part in a channel as if it were a person: it holds open one signed SSE stream to receive messages and POSTs signed requests to send them back. A support desk, a shop concierge, a bridge to another network, your own bot — from the community's side it's just another member typing.
- Acts as a human. Roster presence, @mentions, replies and a profile — every member feature works for it for free, no bot badge.
- Live and two-way. A persistent JSON SSE stream in, signed POSTs out — not fire-and-forget webhooks.
- Simple, rotatable auth. Read with a signed URL, write with a body HMAC. One secret powers both; rotating it revokes both at once.
- Admin-granted powers. Grant just
send, or adddelete,banandrenameto let it moderate. - Tiny Go SDK. A dependency-free client and a ~200-line runnable example — or speak the wire yourself in any language.
# receive — open the signed SSE stream of channel messages
curl -N "$BASE/bots/$ID/stream?exp=0&sig=$SIG"
# send — one signed POST; it appears as a human member's message
curl -X POST "$BASE/bots/$ID/send" \
-H "X-Signature: sha256=$SIG" \
--data-raw '{"channel":"support","body":"on it 👋"}'Good questions
Frequently asked questions
What is ForumChat?
ForumChat is a self-hosted community platform that combines realtime chat, a threaded forum, video rooms and search in one fast app. Think of it as Discord and a discussion forum living in the same place, running on a server you control instead of someone else's cloud.
Is it really free?
Yes. ForumChat is open-source software (AGPL-3.0) you can run yourself at no licence cost. There is no per-seat pricing and no paid tier to unlock core features — your only cost is the small server it runs on, which can be a $5 VPS.
Do I need to be a developer to use it?
To take part in a community, no — you sign in and start chatting like any other app. To host your own, you run a single container; if you can copy and paste one command you can stand it up. There is no build pipeline, database server or cluster to manage.
Where is my data stored?
Everything lives in one SQLite database file plus an uploads folder on your own server. Nothing is sent to a third party, there is no telemetry, and backing up your whole community is as simple as copying that file. If you ever want to leave, you take everything with you.
How is this different from Discord or Slack?
Chat apps are great for the moment but terrible for memory — good ideas scroll away and you don't own the history. ForumChat pairs the same realtime chat with a durable forum so decisions stay findable for years, and you host it yourself, so there are no ads, no algorithmic feed and no company that can lock you out or archive your space.
Does it work on phones?
Yes. The interface is server-rendered HTML that adapts to small screens, so it works in any mobile browser with no app to install. You can also opt in to web push notifications for mentions and new threads — with a digest mode so your phone doesn't buzz on every message.
Can I invite people who don't have an account?
Communities can be public and discoverable or invite-only, and admins control who gets in. Guest lobbies can also be enabled, letting you share a single link with an outsider for a quick conversation without forcing them to register first.
Does the AI assistant send my conversations to OpenAI?
No. The built-in assistant points at your own AI server (such as Ollama) running models you choose. Prompts and answers never leave your infrastructure, and there is no third-party API key to buy — the AI is just another part of the box you already control.
Ready when you are.
Bring your community into one calm, fast home you actually own.