Matrix Synapse hosting,
your homeserver in the open federation.
Run your own corner of the Matrix network. Federated chat across millions of users, end-to-end-encrypted rooms, Element on every device, and a homeserver you fully own. From $5/mo.
Discord's a walled garden. Matrix isn't.
Discord rooms vanish if Discord wants them to. Slack pricing climbs as your community grows. Matrix is open federation - your homeserver talks to matrix.org, mozilla.org, kde.org, and any other Matrix server in the world.
Your community lives on your handle (@you:yourdomain.org). You set the rules. You own the message archive. If Element User Interface changes, you can swap clients without losing the room.
Federated
Join rooms on any homeserver. Bridge to Discord, Telegram, IRC, Slack. One client, many networks.
E2EE rooms
Megolm for groups, Olm for 1:1. Even the homeserver admin can't read your encrypted DMs.
Your community
Branded identity. Open registration or invite-only. Spaces (Discord-style room groupings) and room policies.
Bridges + bots
Maubot framework, GitHub bridge, RSS bot, alertmanager. The plugin ecosystem is huge.
Sizing for users and federation load.
Synapse is famously RAM-hungry, especially when joined to big rooms like Matrix HQ.
- 1 vCPU
- 2 GB RAM
- 40 GB SAS SSD
- 1-10 users, don't join Matrix HQ
- 4 vCPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 160 GB SAS SSD
- 50+ users, joined to mid-size rooms
- 8 vCPU
- 32 GB RAM
- 500 GB SAS SSD
- Hundreds of users, multiple bridges, big rooms
A homeserver in an afternoon.
spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy does the heavy lifting.
- A Pulsar67 VPS (Pulsar Pro is the sweet spot)
- Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12
- A domain you own (the homeserver name is permanent - pick well)
- DNS: SRV records for federation discovery, well-known files served over HTTPS
- Synapse via Docker, or the excellent matrix-docker-ansible-deploy for batteries-included setup
- PostgreSQL (not SQLite - Synapse runs much better on Postgres)
- A reverse proxy (Caddy) with Let's Encrypt
- A backup plan for the Postgres DB + media store
A homeserver that can keep up with the federation.
SAS SSD for Postgres
Synapse-on-Postgres lives or dies by disk IOPS. SAS SSD is the difference between snappy and "loading…"
Daily snapshots
Synapse upgrades occasionally need DB migrations. Snapshot before; restore in seconds if it goes sideways.
DDoS protected
Public homeservers get scanned constantly. We mitigate; your room joins stay smooth.
Engineer support
If federation breaks, we'll help you read the Synapse log. Not redirect you to a generic FAQ.
Ready to claim your homeserver?
Your handle, your rules, your archive. One VPS away.