Self-Hosted Apps Built with Ruby on Rails

6 self-hostable apps built with Ruby on Rails 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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Forum

Discourse

Community forum software built on Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, PostgreSQL and Redis, licensed GPL-2.0-or-later. Chat, polls, solved answers, reactions, assignments and an AI plugin ship in the core repository. The only officially supported install is Docker through the discourse_docker launcher, which builds one container from YAML templates; there is no Compose file.

Ruby on RailsEmber.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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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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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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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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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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