Your people. Your place. Your server.

OwnBase is open-source team chat that you host. Run it on the computer under your desk or on a small server. Your team joins from the same Wi‑Fi, from across the world, or from a link that opens in any browser.

Get OwnBase on GitHub See how hosting works

A pixel-art landscape at dusk. A cabin's orange window is your server. Dotted arcs reach out from it to a house across town, a boat on the lake, a passing train and a city on the horizon, and each one lights up gold as it connects.

All of team chat, on a machine you own

Channels, threads, reactions, search, calls and bots. The desktop app and the browser client are the same app, and a narrow window gets a phone layout.

The OwnBase desktop app in its dark Onyx theme. The #design channel shows Priya's sign-in mockup with reactions, and the thread beside it has replies from Sam, Priya and Maya.

From your desk to anyone, in three steps

Hosting is a button in the desktop app. The same server code runs inside it, so you can move the workspace to a VPS later without changing anything.

  1. Host a workspace on this computer

    Name it and press Start hosting. Your computer becomes the server, and anyone on the same Wi-Fi sees the workspace on their Join screen. One click and they're in.

    Reachable at 192.168.1.42:8543

    The desktop app's Join screen. Under On your network it lists Pinecone Studio with its address. Below are a Direct connect field and the option Host a workspace on this computer.

  2. Open it to the internet

    Open to all starts a Cloudflare Quick Tunnel and gives the workspace an HTTPS address. You don't touch your router or need a Cloudflare account. Already run Tailscale Funnel or a reverse proxy? Enter your own address instead.

    Reachable at https://lantern-maple-quiet-river.trycloudflare.com

    The Manage hosting window on its Share on the internet tab, with the Open to all button and the options to require an account and an invite link.

  3. Send an invite link

    The link opens the workspace in any browser with the invite already filled in, and phones can scan the QR code. New accounts need an invite by default, so a public address isn't an open door.

    Joined from …trycloudflare.com/#/join/JMYJ0SRY

    The Invite people dialog with an HTTPS invite link, a Copy link button, a QR code and the invite code.
    OwnBase in a phone's browser, showing #general. Alex writes from a train that the invite link opened straight in the phone's browser, and Priya writes that it worked the same from Lisbon.

The workspace is up while the host computer is on. Closing the window keeps it running in the system tray.

Download OwnBase

The desktop app hosts and joins workspaces on Windows. On every other system, run the server, or open a workspace in the browser. OwnBase is in beta, so expect rough edges and keep a backup of the data folder.

The whole workspace is one folder

Every message, file and account lives in a data folder on the host. Copy it, back it up, or carry it to another machine. There's no account with us and no cloud in between unless you add one.

data/

workspace.db
every message, account and channel
files/
uploads and images

  • Backups on a schedule

    --backup-dir backs up every 24 hours, checks each copy before keeping it, and keeps the newest seven.

  • Download a copy

    The owner gets the whole workspace as one .zip from Workspace settings. ownbase-server restore --from <zip> puts it back.

  • One file to run

    The standalone server is a single JavaScript file. It needs Node 24 and nothing else, because the database is Node's built-in SQLite. 

$ node ownbase-server.js --data ./data --name "My Team" --invite-only
# or, with Docker
$ docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml up -d

Calls go straight between people

Start a huddle in any channel or DM, with audio, camera and screen share. The server only introduces the people in it. Their audio and video go directly to each other, or through a TURN relay you run when a network blocks direct connections.

A huddle in #general. Priya shares her screen, a sign-in design, on the big stage, with tiles for Maya, Sam, Priya and Alex underneath.
Priya shares her design in #general. Four people, and no media server.

  • Nothing sent for nothing

    A muted microphone sends nothing, and each camera is sent no bigger than the others draw it.

  • Light on the machine

    Twelve people with two cameras on cost each of them about a third of a CPU core.

  • Made for small groups

    Calls are a mesh. Past eight cameras or sixteen people, the call says once that it may stutter.

Your Slack bots already speak OwnBase

Each app gets a bot user, an xoxb- token and incoming webhooks in Slack's shapes, so most integrations work once you change the URL. Slash commands, events, buttons and modals work too, signed the way Slack signs them. 

$ curl -X POST https://chat.yourteam.dev/hooks/<token> \
    -H 'content-type: application/json' \
    -d '{"text":"Build 412 passed on Windows and Linux"}'
A message from Build bot in #engineering: Build 412 passed on Windows and Linux, with Approve and Hold buttons.

The integration contract lists every supported method and field, and each place OwnBase differs from Slack.

Free to host yourself

The self-hosted edition is the whole product, for anyone, companies included. Hosted plans are planned for teams who would rather not run a server.

Self-hosted

Free

Everything in the repository, under the MIT license. No member limit. Support through GitHub issues.

Get OwnBase on GitHub

Team

$20 a month per workspace

We run the server: hosting, daily backups, updates and a stable HTTPS address, for up to 50 members. Download the folder and move to your own server whenever you like.

Not on sale yet

Enterprise

Annual contract

Single sign-on and SCIM, an audit log, compliance export and an SLA, on your servers or a dedicated one we run.

Not on sale yet