Built for small communities
Purpose-built for groups of up to 100 people. A focused space for your people, not a platform chasing scale.
fold
Modern chat. Simple hosting. Your community.
In Development
Fold combines the features you expect from a modern chat platform with the simplicity of old-school voice apps. Built for small communities of up to 100 people, not millions.
Why Fold?
Section titled “Why Fold?”You own everything
Self-hosted on your hardware. Your data stays on your machine, under your control.
Sustainable, not subsidised
Funded by optional hosted audio and video tiers with end-to-end encryption. Revenue goes straight to development.
Simple to run
A single Docker container and a reverse proxy. One instance, one community.
Features
Section titled “Features”Real-time messaging
Instant messaging with markdown support and syntax highlighting.
Channels & categories
Organise conversations into channels grouped by categories.
Voice chat
Built-in voice channels with low-latency group calls. Hosted audio and video with end-to-end encryption.
Custom roles & permissions
Create custom roles with granular permissions. Give your community the structure it needs.
One instance, one community
No federation, no shared infrastructure. Your server runs your community and nothing else.
Cross-platform
Web app available now. Desktop apps in development. iOS and Android coming later this year.
Our Principles
Section titled “Our Principles”Many community platforms start out great, then slowly degrade as they chase growth and investor returns sometimes called enshittification. Fold is designed to avoid it entirely.
Funded by users, not investors
Hosted audio and video tiers fund development directly. No VC capital, no pressure to enshittify.
All features included
Every feature is available to everyone. No paywalls, no premium tiers that lock out functionality.
Open source and transparent
Audit the code, contribute, or fork it.
No tracking
Zero telemetry. No analytics. No ads.
No federation
Intentional simplicity, not a design oversight.
No centralised auth
Your server, your accounts. No dependency on an external service.