Spokes is developed as a one-person operation. Last year I became a father and, more generally, children have been appearing in my friend group at an alarming rate. We are all a bit uneasy about posting family pictures to Discord, Messenger, etc... We want to preserve our children's privacy as much as possible. I was frustrated with the existing options to replace Discord. So I decided to try and build my own. It sounded like a fun challenge. As I worked on the project, I started to realize that my approach was different enough to maybe be interesting to others. So here we are, as of August 2026, Spokes is officially fully released. If you find value in this software, consider buying a license to support its continuous development.
Spokes is guided by 3 design goals :
- Absolute Privacy: All data stays on your server. Any data that must transit through external services (like mobile push notifications) is encrypted in transit.
- Frictionless Experience: Spokes aims to be as easy to use as possible for your friends and family. With native mobile apps, reliable notifications, GIF support and more, Spokes goal is to "just work".
- Easy to Self-Host: Deploying and maintaining Spokes should be as easy as possible for the server administrator, which is why everything runs from a single all-in-one container.
I also did my best to align the business model of Spokes with these design goals. Spokes uses a per-server licensing model. There are no per-user fees and never will be. Purchasing a license gives your server access to future software updates and directly funds the continued development of the platform.
Finally, community feedback is valued and absolutely essential. I invite you to join the Spokes Forum to report bugs, ask questions or share your suggestions!
