Homebox is a free and open source self-hosting solution, based on Debian GNU/Linux. It let you manage your personal information like your emails, your contacts, your calendars and even more, in a safest but still simplest possible way. It is particularly well suited for families and small communities. It is a solution optmised for daily usage rather than development.

Features

The detailed list of features can be viewed on the dedicated features page.

Installation guides

The installation guide is actually on readthedocs site:

Mailing lists

Thanks to Framasoft, two mailing lists have been created, one for general questions, suggestions and support, and another one dedicated for development.

Following the development with with Atom feeds

You can easily follow each commit, for the main and the development branches, with an Atom RSS feed. Each important commit show the commands to run, as well as some information on the commit content.

Source code

The source code is licensed under GPLv3, and the main repository can be viewedis hosted on GitHub.

Pro and cons

✔️ This project is for you if:

  • You are interested to host your emails and personal information yourself, for privacy, security, freedom, fun, etc.
  • You only want to host personal data, like emails, contacts, calendars and personal files.
  • You want your server to be secure against both physical and remote intrusion.
  • You want a low maintenance system, that keep itself updated automatically.
  • You trust the Debian community to publish security updates.
  • You enjoy taking days off away from your servers without worrying.

❌ ️However, this project is not for you if:

  • You prefer deploying software directly from source rather than installing packages from a distribution.
  • You want to use popular “web clouds” written in PHP, like owncloud or nextcloud.
  • You are planning to follow security alerts and apply patches manually.
  • You enjoy fixing incompatibilities between different packages manually installed on a server.
  • You favour the number of features over reliability and stability.
  • The security of your platform is not your main concern.

It is using a set of Ansible scripts to setup the whole platform from a freshly installed Debian server. Therefore, you need to be familiar with Ansible and the command line. The system can be installed on a stand-alone server at home, or on a dedicated or virtual server hosted online.