Bonfire Mosaic

A community space that's yours to keep.

Most communities online live on borrowed land: a platform that owns your members, sets the rules, raises the price, and can lock the doors whenever it likes. Mosaic is the opposite. We co-design a space around how your community works, and you own it outright: forkable, exportable, impossible to take away.

Book a call See what we've built

◼ We work closely with a handful of communities a year. We build the space with you and hand it over as yours.

A community's own space on Bonfire, in their own brand and language, recognisably theirs

Rented vs. owned

Most communities online don't belong to the community.

There are only two ways to run a community space. The difference comes down to who holds the keys. See how the options stack up →

Renting space on a platform
You look like everyone elseSame templates, same layout, same defaults. A client once told us every community on these tools ends up looking identical.
You live on their termsPrices, rules and features change without asking you. You adapt, or you leave and lose everything.
It can disappearGet cancelled, acquired or shut down, and your community goes with it. You were only ever a tenant.
You're the productYour members and their data are what's actually being sold. The space works for the platform, not for you.
A space you own
It looks like youYour identity, your structure, your language throughout. Recognisable as yours, and nowhere else's.
You set the termsGovernance, boundaries and moderation are yours to decide, and yours to change whenever your community changes.
No one can take it awayOpen source, forkable, exportable. Move it to another team or run it yourself. Walk out with everything, any time.
It belongs to your communityNo one's harvesting your members. The space works for the people in it. Full stop.

What "yours" actually means

Not a place you rent. A place that's built to be yours.

Shaped around your community

We start from how you already gather (your roles, rituals and rules) and build the space to match. It looks and works like nowhere else, because it's made for one community: yours.

Owned outright, not rented

Open source and yours to keep. Forkable, exportable, no per-seat trap, and no subscription you're locked into. Take it to another team or run it yourself whenever you decide.

Your site and your community, one thing

The public face and the conversation on the same system, in the same identity. Members move between them without noticing a seam.

Connected on your own terms

Federated with the wider open social web, so your members can reach the world, but only as much as you choose. Open the doors wide, or keep it private and invite-only.

How we build it with you

You know your community. We know the software.

Mosaic is those two things in a room together. You make the calls about how your community should run; we work out what that means in software, and everything we build goes back into the commons.

01

You talk, we listen

Interviews and workshops with your people. How do you gather? Who decides what? Where does it break down today? We've never yet found a community that works the way its org chart says.

02

We co-design it together

Together we shape the space: the circles, the roles, the boundaries, the flows. You make the calls about how your community should run; we work out what that means in software.

03

We build it

When possible this is simply assembling building blocks that already exist, and that doesn't stop at Bonfire's own extensions. Rather than succumb to "not invented here" syndrome, we interconnect with dedicated open-source tools across the wider ecosystem. We only write new code where something doesn't exist yet, and when we do, it becomes a block anyone can reuse.

04

You take the keys

Your brand, your language, your governance, and training for the people who'll actually run it day to day: your facilitators and your moderators. It's yours from here.

05

We watch it grow

We get you set up on our cooperative hosting network, or help your team with installing it up on your own infrastructure. And we remain available for updates, fixes and new features.

Who we've built with

Three communities. Three different spaces.

The same foundation, shaped three ways: a magazine, a research network and a care coalition need almost nothing in common. Each one owns what we built together.

Jacobin's community space on Bonfire
A magazine

From audience to community

A community of readers who debate and belong. Publishing stayed on their Ghost site; the community lives on Bonfire, wearing their brand.

3,000+ readersRead →
The Open Science Network on Bonfire
A research network

A commons for scholars

Co-designed with working researchers: ORCID sign-in, publications on your profile, papers that unfold with their DOI.

Built with academicsVisit →
Mentaal, a private federated mental-health network using Archipelago mode
A mental-health network

A safe space that's theirs

Private, invite-only, carefully moderated. Safety and governance designed in from the first workshop.

500+ membersPlanned

The part no agency can offer

What you fund, everyone inherits. What others funded, you get for free.

Everything built in Mosaic is open source and goes back into the commons. That changes the economics. Your budget builds shared building blocks that every community draws on, and your own space grows out of it.

You inherit what others already paid for Researchers funded ORCID sign-in and publication imports. Jacobin funded federated comments and CMS integration. Both are sitting there, free, if you want them. You start further along than they did.
What you fund outlives you The block we build for your need becomes available to every community after you. Your budget doesn't just give you a space of your own, but grows the commons everyone builds on.

Ways to work together

However far you want to go, you end up owning it.

Every route is bespoke. We don't do per-seat plans or off-the-shelf tiers. Where you land depends on how much your community needs shaped.

You need it to fit

Tailored space

Bonfire wearing your identity, with your governance and the integrations you already rely on.

  • Workshops with your team
  • Custom identity, roles & boundaries
  • Integrations (CMS, membership, SSO)
  • Training + hosting
◼ Weeks · scoped to a fixed quote
You need something new

Co-design partnership

Your community needs capabilities nobody's built yet, the way researchers needed DOIs on their profiles.

  • Community research & co-design
  • New blocks, built with you
  • Contributed back to the commons
  • Often grant-funded, and we'll help you apply
◼ Months · scoped together
You want us to stay

Ongoing partnership

The unglamorous part that keeps a space alive: we maintain the code, a co-op runs the infrastructure.

  • Code updates & new features, on a retainer
  • Hosting & backups via our co-op network
  • A human to call when it breaks
  • Or a clean handover, whenever you want
◼ Ongoing · a retainer, cancel anytime and keep your space

Tell us your budget and we'll tell you honestly what's possible, including when the answer is "you don't need us, here's how to do it yourself." And if self-hosting is the right call, we can still help you get there through community install parties or a 1-on-1 setup session. We'd rather send you away with a working plan than take money for a project that shouldn't happen.

Let's talk

Tell us how your community works.

We take on only a handful of communities a year, and we start by listening. If it's a fit, you walk away owning something no one can take from you.

Book a call See what we've built

or email mosaic@bonfirenetworks.org

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