# Campfire by 37signals

16 Hacker News commenters recommended Campfire by 37signals and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, open source team chat that is simple to self-host and back up. Critics say it is not actively maintained.

## Why people recommend it

- Free, self-hostable, open source (2 comments): "self-hostable and completely free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674548)) "It's open source, trivial to self-host, and can support an arbitrary number of rooms and users." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959006))
- Easy to host and set up (2 comments): "Straightforward, easy to host, easy to backup, no monetization strategy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947550)) "very, very simple, but pretty nice to use and easy to set up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46946576))
- Base for custom features (2 comments): "This can also serve as a foundation to add your own features on top of." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46973829)) "we cheated and edited 37signals' Campfire instead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281175))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Slack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/slack.md): 248 recommend
- [Microsoft Teams](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-teams.md): 228 recommend
- [Zulip](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zulip.md): 143 recommend
- [Chatto](https://hackerapproved.com/p/chatto.md): 55 recommend
- [Mattermost](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mattermost.md): 40 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Campfire by 37signals", https://hackerapproved.com/p/campfire/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).