Team chat that lives on your hardware
Messaging, voice, video and screen sharing for your team — running on infrastructure you own, under rules you set.
Self-hosted, and that is the point
Most team chat is someone else's server with your company's conversations on it. Homestead inverts that. You run it; your data stays where you put it.
You are the data controller
Not us. There is no vendor holding your messages, no sub-processor chain to audit, and no third party who can be compelled to produce your conversations.
Data residency is wherever you are
Run it in your own rack, your own cloud tenancy, your own jurisdiction. Residency stops being a procurement question and becomes a deployment decision.
No per-seat meter
Your costs are the hardware you already own. Adding people does not add a line item.
It keeps working
No vendor outage, no pricing change, no sunset notice. The server is yours and it runs until you stop it.
Everything a team actually uses
Built as a complete replacement, not a chat box with features bolted on.
Channels and direct messages
Organised channels, threads, mentions, reactions, pinned messages, full-text search and polls.
Voice and video
Low-latency voice rooms and video calls over WebRTC, with your own TURN server for networks that need it.
Screen sharing
Share a screen into any voice room, with a click-to-focus stage for whoever is presenting.
Roles and permissions
Per-role channel access, admin controls, invite management and an audit view of who did what.
Two-factor authentication
Email and SMS second factors, trusted devices, and QR approval for signing in on the desktop app.
Desktop, web and mobile
A native desktop app for Windows, the full product in any modern browser, and mobile builds in progress.
Built for teams that get asked hard questions
Self-hosting does not make compliance obligations disappear — it moves them somewhere you control. Here is the honest shape of it.
| Question | Hosted chat | Homestead |
|---|---|---|
| Where does our data live? | Vendor's regions | Wherever you deploy it |
| Who is the data controller? | Shared, via a DPA | You, solely |
| Who can be compelled to disclose? | The vendor | Only you |
| Sub-processors to review | The vendor's full list | None by default |
| What happens at end of contract? | Export window, then deletion | Nothing — it is your server |
Homestead is self-hosted software, not a processing service. Your deployment is yours to configure, secure and operate. Documentation covering data flows, retention and accessibility conformance ships with the product.
Get Homestead
Run the server on your own hardware, then point a client at it. Every build is free to download.
Windows
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Installer.
Download .exeUnsigned for now, so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning — choose More info, then Run anyway.
macOS
Apple Silicon and Intel. Disk image.
Apple Silicon IntelNot notarised yet: right-click the app and choose Open the first time.
Linux
AppImage runs anywhere; .deb for Debian, Ubuntu and Mint.
AppImage .debMake the AppImage executable
(chmod +x) and run it — no install, no root.
Android
Android 7 and later. Sideload the APK.
Download .apkNot on Google Play yet, so allow installation from your browser when Android asks.
iOS builds need an Apple Developer account before they can be distributed — in progress. Ask about self-hosting if you would like help standing up a server.