Bonfire Hosting Live In 5 Minutes

Bonfire hosting gives you your own federated social network on your own domain. Deploy Bonfire 1.0.7 as a self-hosted federated social network: xCloud runs the pinned social image with a private PostgreSQL 17 database and a private Meilisearch search service, creates your administrator at first start with a generated password, keeps uploads, the database and the search index on persistent volumes, and publishes it over HTTPS.

Deploy your Bonfire

No terminal
No technical skills needed
No lock-in, cancel anytime

What is Bonfire?

Self-hosted Bonfire is a federated social network. Its README calls Bonfire an open-source framework for building federated digital spaces where people can gather, interact and form communities, made of modular extensions and federating over ActivityPub, with several flavours; this template runs the Social flavour for classical social networking. It gives you customisable feeds, circles and boundaries and a Mastodon-compatible API, as a space of your own rather than an account on a platform such as Twitter. It is AGPL-3.0-only.

On xCloud the template runs bonfirenetworks/bonfire 1.0.7-social pinned by immutable digest beside a private PostgreSQL 17 database with PostGIS and a private Meilisearch service. The bonfire_db, bonfire_uploads and bonfire_search volumes persist everything. HTTPS is published on your domain, sign-up is invite-only, and no outgoing email is configured until you add SMTP.

From Sign-Up to a Live Instance In Just 3 Easy Steps

A Bonfire instance normally means a web container, a PostGIS database, a search service, a set of generated secrets, volumes, a domain and a certificate before the first post. This is the same result without assembling any of it.

Step 01
Sign Up
Create your xCloud account and pick Bonfire from the OneClick catalog. Choose your domain, then enter the administrator email — that is the only field to fill in. Choose the final domain now: it becomes the federation identity of every account and post.
Step 02
We Deploy It For You
One click. We bring up Bonfire 1.0.7 (social), a private PostgreSQL 17 database with PostGIS and a private Meilisearch service, none of them published to the internet. We mount the bonfire_db, bonfire_uploads and bonfire_search volumes, generate the administrator password and the app secrets, and publish Bonfire over HTTPS on your domain. The first start runs database migrations, so it can take a few minutes.
Step 03
Sign In And Invite People
Save the generated administrator password from the installation credentials, open your HTTPS URL and sign in at /login with the administrator email (the username is admin). Then create invites from the admin area for the people you want to join.

Everything Bonfire Does, On Your Own Server

Bonfire runs in full here: a federated social network on your own domain, backed by a database and search index you own.

Federation Over ActivityPub
Bonfire is built on ActivityPub, so your instance is a space of its own in the fediverse rather than an account on someone else's platform.
Customisable Feeds
Shape what appears in your feeds instead of accepting one fixed timeline.
Circles And Boundaries
Group people into circles and use boundaries to control who can see and do what on the instance.
Mastodon-Compatible API
A Mastodon-compatible API lets existing Mastodon clients talk to your instance.
Full-Text Search
A bundled Meilisearch service powers search; in QA a post was found by a word in its text and a user by name.
Posts With Uploaded Media
Attach images to posts; uploads are stored on the bonfire_uploads volume, with default limits of 5 MB for images and 20 MB for files and videos.

Everything You Need To Run Your Fediverse Instance 24/7

Managed hosting for Bonfire, so the parts that keep it online are not your problem.

Bonfire 1.0.7 deployed instantly
Official image pinned by digest
Administrator created at first start
Private database and search service
Free SSL certificate
Server backups and snapshots
Server security updates included
30+ server locations
Unused balance refunded

What You Can Do With Bonfire

Give a community its own social space
Run an instance for a club, collective or project on your own domain, with the rules and the membership decided by you.
Run a team or organisation instance
Keep an organisation's public presence on a server it controls instead of a platform it rents space on.
Control who sees what
Use circles and boundaries to decide which people and posts reach which audiences on your instance.
Keep using the clients you know
Point existing Mastodon-compatible clients at your own instance through the Mastodon-compatible API.
Start an invite-only network
Create the administrator at install and open the door only through invites you create.

Bonfire Screenshots

Bonfire dashboard after signing in as the administrator

Bonfire search results for a word in a post

Bonfire vs Alternatives

Twitter: Twitter is a hosted social network run by one company. A self-hosted Bonfire instance is a federated space of your own on ActivityPub, with your domain as its identity, invite-only sign-up and the data on your own server.
Mastodon: Mastodon is a federated microblogging server with its own xCloud template. Bonfire, per its README, is a modular framework with extensions, and adds customisable feeds, circles and boundaries.
GoToSocial: GoToSocial is a lightweight ActivityPub server with its own xCloud template. This Bonfire template bundles full-text search through a private Meilisearch service.
Friendica: Friendica is a decentralised social network server with its own xCloud template. Bonfire brings circles, boundaries and customisable feeds to decide who sees what.

Simple Pricing. Everything Included.

Dedicated Cloud VPS sizes, pre-configured for Bonfire hosting. Pick the one that fits, and resize any time.

Cloud VPS 6 GB

Cloud VPS 16 GB

More headroom for a busier instance with federation, media and search.

$59.99per month

16 GB RAM
6 vCPU cores
200 GB NVMe SSD
30 TB
Unlimited

Get started

Every size is a dedicated Cloud VPS we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Billed monthly with no lock-in — delete the server and the unused balance comes back to your account. Bonfire itself is licensed by its maintainers under AGPL-3.0-only.

Docker hosting

Already Have a Server? Bring Your Own

Connect any VPS — DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Hetzner or bare metal — and deploy Bonfire on it through the same panel, for a per-server management fee instead of a Cloud VPS rental.

Free

Start your journey without cost.

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1 server
10 sites

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The same platform, discounted at 6–10 servers.

$4per server / month

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Unlimited sites
All features included
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Agency

The same platform, discounted at 11+ servers.

$3per server / month

11+ servers
Unlimited sites
All features included
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Priced per connected server, so your rate adjusts automatically as you add or remove servers. You pay your own provider for the server itself.

Self-managed hosting

Ready To Run Your Own Fediverse Instance?

Bonfire on xCloud runs on a dedicated Cloud VPS that we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Deploy faster. Own the server. Stay in control.

Fast Provisioning
Deploy faster using an xCloud Managed Server built with optimized stacks and high-speed SSDs.
Enterprise-grade security
Protect your infrastructure with a free SSL certificate and more advanced security features at no additional cost.
Intuitive Control Panel
From Server creation to application deployment, everything can be managed from our intuitive control panel.

Hear what people are saying about us

See why agencies, developers, startups, and growing businesses choose xCloud to power their projects.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

How much RAM does Bonfire need?

The manifest asks for 1 CPU core, 2048 MB of RAM and 10 GB of disk; QA saw about 1 GB in use across the app, database and search service. The 6 GB Cloud VPS sold on this page leaves real headroom above that, which federation traffic and media will use.

Is Bonfire free and open source?

Yes. Bonfire is AGPL-3.0-only, per the licence file in the repository at the v1.0.7 tag, and its README calls it open source. There is no licence fee; xCloud simply bills the dedicated Cloud VPS, and your accounts and posts stay on your own volumes.

Can you run Bonfire with Docker?

Yes, and this is Bonfire Docker hosting prepared for you. Upstream documents a deployment guide; the template runs the official bonfirenetworks/bonfire 1.0.7-social image beside PostgreSQL 17 with PostGIS and Meilisearch, all pinned by immutable digest, with three volumes and HTTPS on your domain.

What is the difference between Bonfire and Mastodon?

Both federate over ActivityPub. Bonfire's README describes a modular framework of extensions with several flavours, and this template runs the Social one, with customisable feeds, circles and boundaries. Mastodon is a separate microblogging server, and xCloud has a template for it too.

Mastodon hosting

Can strangers sign up on my Bonfire instance?

No. Sign-up is invite-only. The administrator is created at install, so there is no open first-signup window; create invites from the admin area for the people you want to join. Sign in at /login with the admin username and the generated password.

Is a self-hosted Bonfire instance private?

Not by default. Bonfire has its own accounts, but anyone who can reach the domain can read public profiles and posts. For a private instance, configure Basic Auth at your reverse proxy or access layer yourself, knowing that this also blocks other servers from federating.

Does Bonfire work with Mastodon clients?

Bonfire has a Mastodon-compatible API, so existing Mastodon clients can talk to your instance. Remote federation lookups were not exercised in xCloud's QA run, so test federation and your chosen client with your own accounts after install rather than assuming every feature works.

Does Bonfire send email out of the box?

No. Email is not configured by default (MAIL_BACKEND=none), so invited accounts that need email confirmation cannot complete it until you add SMTP settings in the Environment editor and redeploy. Plan to do that before you send invitations to other people.

What should I back up on a Bonfire server?

A backup needs the three named volumes together: bonfire_db for the database, bonfire_uploads for uploaded media and bonfire_search for the search index, plus the install environment values. Keep the generated secrets stable and private, and test a restore first.

Backups in xCloud

How do I upgrade Bonfire?

Nothing upgrades it for you: the template pins 1.0.7-social by immutable digest. When xCloud publishes a newer template version, back up the bonfire_db, bonfire_uploads and bonfire_search volumes, read the upstream release notes, then adopt that template version. Keep the same domain, since it is the federation identity.

Is this Bonfire cloud hosting?

It is your own instance on a dedicated Cloud VPS provisioned by xCloud, not a hosted community platform. The app, the database, the search service and the volumes belong to your install, and the domain you choose becomes the federation identity of every account.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. There is no lock-in — cancel any time. Hosting is billed monthly and charged for what you actually use, so when you delete the server the unused balance is refunded to your account, less up to 10% in payment-processing fees.