Explore what your community could build.
FeaturesBUILD Building blocks your community can combine. Comparison tableCOMPARE How Bonfire differs from other community platforms. Case studiesSTORIES How communities are shaping Bonfire for their needs. About BonfireABOUT The project, principles, and people behind it. Try Bonfire at the campground ↗ Launch your BonfireChoose how much you want to run yourself.
Self-hostDIY Your infrastructure and some sysadmin comfort. Cooperative hostingHOST Your own space without a sysadmin job. Co-design with usWITH For communities, organisations and funders with specific needs. Compare all three routes → EcosystemFind people, answers, and tools around Bonfire.
ParticipateJOIN Contribute, collaborate, or help sustain the commons. FAQsASK Licensing, federation, privacy, and governance. DocumentationDOCS Setup guides and technical reference for hosts and builders. Browse the source code ↗ Blog Get startedYou run it
Bonfire is open source and AGPL, free forever. You can run it on your own infrastructure. Your data, your policies, no fees. It's a first-class route, and it's the right one for communities with the technical capacity (or the appetite to build it). Here's what that involves, and where to turn if you'd rather not.
Not very technical? You needn't do it alone, we can help you set it up. Or skip the ops entirely: two other routes hand the running over to a hosting co-op.
The shape of it
A bird's-eye view so you can gauge the effort. Every step is covered in detail in the setup guide, but here's an overview.
A machine you can SSH into, with about 8 GB+ of RAM. Best of all is your own hardware, or a virtual machine on infrastructure run by friends, allies, or a co-op you trust, keeping it close to home. A rented VPS or dedicated server (Hetzner is a common choice) works as well. Wherever it runs, you hold the keys.
Pick a domain or subdomain, it becomes part of every username, like @you@yourdomain.net. Add an email service (Mailgun, SMTP, or similar) for sign-ups and notifications, and set up DNS records.
Bonfire can be deployed a few ways, from most hands-off to most hands-on. Pick the one that fits your setup:
Co-op Cloud · recommended
Tooling built by tech co-ops, with a ready-made Bonfire recipe. Easiest path, and handy if you'll host other open source apps too.
Docker
Pull our pre-built images (easy mode), or build your own if you want to assemble your own flavour from available extensions.
Bare-metal
No containers: you run Postgres, Elixir and a process supervisor yourself. Most control, most manual work.
Guix
Declarative and reproducible, via the bonfire-guix channel, for the infrastructure-as-code crowd.
Choose the flavour that fits: community, social, and others each ship a different set of features. Then fill in a .env with your domain, mail keys, etc.
Bring it up behind HTTPS and open your domain. Instances are invite-only by default, the first account to sign up skips that and becomes the admin, so you're in control from the first minute.
You're not on your own
Ask for advice in the chat, the easiest door when you hit a snag.
Join us on Matrix →New to servers? We occasionally run community install parties as well as 1-on-1 sessions for clients, to walk you through setup, screen to screen, then hand you the keys.
Get in touch →Decide the ops aren't for you after all? A co-op can run the whole thing, so you can have your own space without the sysadmin job.
Cooperative hosting →Self-hosting not for you?
For those who want to self-host their own Bonfire instance. You'll need to be comfortable with the command line.
New to servers? We run guided install parties & 1-on-1 setup.
Join a nascent co-operative ecosystem to operate a sustainable, resilient infrastructure for Bonfire development, hosting, and support.
Rely on the Bonfire team to build a tailored digital space for your community and support you through the whole process.
