Niche community hosting
a focused community without Reddit's policies
// official site: join-lemmy.org ↗
COMMUNITY · PRO TIER
Lemmypro
Lemmy is a federated link aggregator — think Reddit, but over ActivityPub. Self-host your own instance, federate with others to form a network that's resistant to single-point control. Communities ("sublemmys") instead of subreddits, votes propagate across instances, profiles portable.
// What it is
A closer look.
Lemmy is a federated link aggregator — think Reddit, but over ActivityPub. Self-host your own instance, federate with others to form a network that's resistant to single-point control. Communities ("sublemmys") instead of subreddits, votes propagate across instances, profiles portable.
Built in Rust for performance. The Fediverse's answer to Reddit's API rebellion.
// Use cases
What it's for.
Concrete scenarios where teams pick Lemmy over the SaaS alternative.
Federated discussion
connect to other Lemmy + Mastodon instances
Privacy-respecting forums
no algorithmic feed manipulation, no ads
Open governance
community moderators, transparent rules
API access
third-party apps and bots work natively
// Who it's for
Built for these teams.
If your team profile matches one of these, Lemmy is a strong fit out of the box.
Community builders
rejecting Reddit's API closure
Open-source projects
hosting their own discussion forum
Privacy advocates
moving off centralized platforms
Fediverse enthusiasts
running federated nodes
Hosting providers
offering a community platform to clients
// Differentiators
Why teams pick Lemmy.
When evaluating self-hosted options for this category, here are the dimensions on which Lemmy consistently lands above the alternatives.
- ✓AGPL-3.0 — copyleft open-source
- ✓ActivityPub — federate with thousands of Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy nodes
- ✓Rust backend — fast, low resource consumption
- ✓Inferno UI — TypeScript front-end, customizable
- ✓Mature — battle-tested by lemmy.world, lemmy.ml (100k+ users)
- ✓API + mobile apps — Voyager, Jerboa, Mlem, Memmy
// Integrations
Connects to.
The stack you'll plug Lemmy into — services, protocols, and adjacent apps in the BluixApps catalog.
◇
Federation
ActivityPub with Lemmy + Mastodon + PeerTube + Mbin
◈
pict-rs
image hosting service (bundled)
◆
Mobile apps
Voyager (PWA), Jerboa (Android), Mlem (iOS)
▣
OAuth
via reverse proxy + external IdP
▦
Webhooks
for moderation tooling
▩
Email
SMTP for notifications and password reset
// Adoption & deployment
Notable users & community
- 13k+ GitHub stars
- Powers lemmy.world (200k+ users post-Reddit-API-crisis)
- Multi-lingual moderation tools
- 3 dedicated mobile app developers
- Active Matrix + Discord communities
What we ship
- Docker stack: lemmy + lemmy-ui + Postgres 16 + pict-rs
- Pinned
dessalines/lemmy:0.19.5 - Auto-generated DB password + JWT secret + pict-rs API key
- Port 1236 (HTTP), reverse-proxy + HTTPS needed for production federation
- Persistent volumes for postgres + pict-rs media
- Install report covering first-user setup
- Backup hook covers postgres + pict-rs data
// Tips & operations
Run it properly.
Operational guidance from running this in production — what to lock down, what surprises people.
// PERFORMANCE
HTTPS required for federation
IP-only deployments can't federate; use DNS + cert
// SECURITY
pict-rs
required for image uploads; configure persistent volume
// OPERATIONS
Federation key signing
generated on first start; back up the config
// RELIABILITY
Postgres tuning
busy instances need shared_buffers + work_mem tuned
// DEPLOYMENT
Moderation tooling
bots/scripts for spam mitigation are essential at scale
// SCALING
Defederation policy
document your stance on hate-speech instances early
1024
// min ram (MB)
8
// min disk (GB)
1236
// access port
http
// protocol
pro
// bluixapps tier
Project resources
Official sitejoin-lemmy.org ↗