Self-Hosted Apps Built with Ruby

8 self-hostable apps built with Ruby you can run on your own server — compared on specs, deployment difficulty, and the SaaS each one replaces.

Helpdesk

Chatwoot

A self-hosted Intercom and Zendesk alternative built around one shared inbox for website live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, LINE, SMS and API channels, with a help center portal, canned responses, automations and CSAT reports. MIT core; SLA policies, Captain AI, custom roles and SSO are in a separately licensed enterprise directory.

RubyRailsVuePostgreSQL

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E-signature

DocuSeal

A self-hosted document filling and signing platform: turn PDFs into fillable forms with a WYSIWYG field builder, send them to one or more signers, and get back automatically signed PDFs with an audit log.

RubyRailsVue

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Code hosting

GitLab CE

The whole DevOps platform in one install: repositories, merge requests, issues, a built-in CI/CD runner fleet, container and package registries, and Pages. It is open core — the community edition is MIT, the ee/ directory behind the paid tiers is not — and it is by far the heaviest thing on this list.

RubyGoPostgreSQL

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Workflow automation

Huginn

A system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online — they read the web, watch for events and take actions on your behalf, in the IFTTT/Zapier mould but with the data on your own server. A Ruby on Rails application under the plain MIT license, in continuous development since 2013, with official Docker images that bundle MySQL so a single container is a complete install. Agents are configured as JSON, not dragged onto a canvas — the most hands-on tool in this hub.

RubyRailsMySQL

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Ka

Platform-as-a-Service

Kamal

A command-line tool that deploys containerised web apps to your own servers over SSH, with zero-downtime switchovers through its kamal-proxy. It builds your image, pushes it to a registry, pulls it on each server and starts the new container once it answers its health check; there is no web dashboard and no server-side platform to run, just Docker on the target hosts. Originally built for Rails apps, it works for any web app that runs in a container.

RubyDockerkamal-proxy

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Social network (Fediverse)

Mastodon

A decentralized microblogging server built on ActivityPub. Each server runs its own community and federates with other Mastodon and Fediverse servers.

RubyRailsNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Project Management

OpenProject

Open-source project management software for product, project, and portfolio management. The self-hosted GPL-3.0 Community Edition ships work packages (tasks/subtasks/features/milestones), Gantt charts, agile/kanban boards, Scrum backlogs, time tracking, and a project wiki — TOTP/WebAuthn two-factor authentication is included free; LDAP group sync, SSO, resource management, and custom branding are Enterprise-only add-ons layered on top and aren't part of the free build.

RubyTypeScriptPostgreSQL

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Helpdesk

Zammad

A full ticketing helpdesk under AGPL-3.0, owned by the Zammad Foundation and developed by Zammad GmbH: email, web form, chat widget, SMS, Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook channels plus CTI phone integrations, with SLAs, time accounting, a knowledge base, core workflows and LDAP. The whole codebase is AGPL-3.0; Zammad GmbH sells hosting and support packages, not a paid edition.

RubyRailsPostgreSQLElasticsearch

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