Campfire by 37signals
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 7 of 11 team chat apps by recommenders
Free, open source team chat that is simple to self-host and back up. Critics say it is not actively maintained.
Free, open source team chat that is simple to self-host and back up. Critics say it is not actively maintained.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Free, self-hostable, open source
“self-hostable and completely free”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss” “It's open source, trivial to self-host, and can support an arbitrary number of rooms and users.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Discord Alternatives, Ranked” Easy to host and set up
“Straightforward, easy to host, easy to backup, no monetization strategy.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Globally” “very, very simple, but pretty nice to use and easy to set up”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Globally” Base for custom features
“This can also serve as a foundation to add your own features on top of.”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Communities Are Not Fungible” “we cheated and edited 37signals' Campfire instead”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic, Please Make a New Slack”
Other team chat apps people recommend
The four most recommended other team chat apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slack | 248 | 387 | 39% | 12 | 10 yrs10 owners | — |
| Microsoft Teams | 228 | 701 | 25% | 13 | 1.5 yrs11 owners | — |
| Zulip | 143 | 58 | 71% | 11 | 5 yrs10 owners | Approved |
| Chatto | 55 | 13 | 81% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Campfire by 37signalsThis page | 16 | 3 | 84% | 5 | — | Approved |
What people said
19 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“campfire doesn't support voice/video calls”
“give me a break, grown up adults with families don't have time for that Silicon Valley wankery”
“agent coordination at internet scale without a walled garden”
“I made a spec and a reference impl that does that and more.”
“we cheated and edited 37signals' Campfire instead”
“This can also serve as a foundation to add your own features on top of.”
“this is the first one that really looks promising to me”
“This is cool. Thanks for the shout.”
“I don't spend any time thinking about it.”
“It's open source, trivial to self-host, and can support an arbitrary number of rooms and users.”
“there’s Campfire and Writebook by 37signals”
“that's a deal-breaker for probably most organizations and teams”
“Based on the few number of open issues, and a PR closed last week, it feels like it's being maintained”
“It is not an actively maintained Discord alternative.”
“Straightforward, easy to host, easy to backup, no monetization strategy.”
“very, very simple, but pretty nice to use and easy to set up”
“self-hostable and completely free”
“campfire, matrix, slack, zulio, lync, wave, and a hundred others have had their moments of success”
“It's not that expensive compared to what companies spend on Slack.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.