The Desk
Open source, self-hosted team chat

Team chat that lives on your own server

The Desk is a calm, fast, self-hosted Slack alternative: channels, threads, reminders, scheduled messages. One container, your hardware, your data. No per-seat pricing, because there's no one to pay.

Deploy in 5 minutesTry the live demo

No signup, no install — the demo's login page shows the shared credentials.

docker compose pull && docker compose up -dand it's installed. Prebuilt image, no build step.
The Desk's workspace: an icon rail, the channel dock, and the #product-launch channel with a pinned message, reactions and a thread
See it in action

Your whole workspace, quietly in one place

Channels, threads, reactions, and direct messages: the real app, not a mockup. Light and dark both ship, on desktop and on mobile.

The Desk workspace: the icon rail and channel dock beside the #product-launch channel, with reactions, a pinned message and a thread
Powered by

A boring stack you already know how to run

One compose file, a handful of containers. No Kubernetes, no exotic dependencies.

Laravel
Laravel 13Application framework, queues & scheduler
Vue.js
Vue 3Frontend, served through Inertia
Inertia
InertiaServer-driven SPA, no separate API
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQLDatabase, cache, sessions & queue
Meilisearch
MeilisearchInstant full-text message search
Redis
RedisCache & realtime presence
Docker
DockerThe whole stack in one compose file: FrankenPHP app image, Reverb websockets, queue worker & scheduler
Everything a team needs

Built in, not add-ons

Channels, threads, and DMs are table stakes. The Desk also covers the workflow features teams actually miss when they leave the big platforms.

Reminder: retro moved to Thursday.Sends Mon 9:00 AM
Scheduled messagesWrite now, send when it's kind to. Edit or cancel anything still in the queue.
Remind me about this tomorrow at 9 AM
Message remindersSnooze any message and it resurfaces exactly when you asked. Nothing slips.
Starting a thread for icon feedback.5 replies
Threads & group DMsSide conversations stay at the side. Channels stay readable.
🚀 7🥳 3+
Reactions & custom emojiUpload your team's own emoji. Inside jokes are a feature, not bloat.
Reconnecting… your drafts are safe
Connection resilienceFlaky wifi, laptop lids, VPN drops: The Desk reconnects and catches up quietly.
Analytics, audit log, roles & invitations
Real admin toolsTeam analytics, a moderation audit log, roles, and session management, all included.
The Desk on a phone: the #product-launch channel with a pinned message, an attachment, reactions, a thread and the message composer
On your phone

Install it on your phone, then tell it when to be quiet

The same server you already run, on the home screen. No app store, no second product, no third-party notification service in the middle.

  • Add to home screen. An installable app on iOS, Android and desktop, with web push so messages arrive when the tab is closed. Fresh installs generate their own push keys, so it works without extra setup.
  • Designed for the phone, not shrunk to fit. Dialogs come up as bottom sheets, a long press opens message actions, and threads and the quick switcher go full screen.
  • Quiet hours. Pause notifications on a daily schedule, or snooze them for the rest of today. Calm is a setting, not a hope.
Self-hosted, for real

Your messages never leave your building

No SaaS middleman, no data-retention lawyering, no surprise pricing changes. The Desk ships as one compose file with a prebuilt image. Run it on a VPS, a NAS in the closet, or your company's rack.

  • Unlimited everything. Members, history, file storage, bounded by your disk, not a plan.
  • Boring, auditable stack. Laravel, Vue, Postgres, Reverb, Meilisearch. No build step. Read every line on GitHub.
  • Leave anytime. Built-in data export for every user. It's your database either way.
you@yourserver
$ git clone https://github.com/deskhq/the-desk.git && cd the-desk
$ ./docker/gen-secrets.sh # fills APP_KEY, DB, Reverb keys
$ docker compose up -d
Pulling ghcr.io/deskhq/the-desk:latest… done
Running migrations… done
✓ The Desk is live at https://desk.your-domain.com
$

Set up The Desk before your next standup

Free forever, MIT licensed. If you can run a container, you can run your team's chat.

Read the install guideStar on GitHub

Not ready to install? Try the live demo — no signup, credentials are on the login page.