Open source chat server for mobile and web apps | Free, Secure, and Easy to Use | WarmIndex

Open source chat server for developers building secure, real-time messaging features into mobile and web apps.

🚀 Overview

SAMA (Simple but Advanced Messaging Alternative) is a next-generation open-source chat platform providing a high-performance, self-hostable server for real-time communication. Powered by uWebSockets.js, it handles users, conversations, messages, group chats, push notifications, and more with clustering and end-to-end encryption support out of the box.

This project solves the issues with outdated protocols like XMPP—which is complex and inefficient—and proprietary services like Firebase Chat that create vendor lock-in and privacy concerns. SAMA offers a modern, lightweight alternative that's blazing fast, easy to deploy via Docker, and fully customizable.

It's built for developers, indie makers, and teams integrating chat into their applications. The creators built it to provide a simple yet advanced, privacy-focused messaging backend without compromises on performance or openness.

✨ Key Features

High-performance WebSocket server using uWebSockets.js for massive concurrency and low latency
Real-time messaging, group chats, channels, threads, activities, address book, and multi-device sync
End-to-end encryption (in active development via open PRs)
Push notifications and programmable chat bots
Extensive REST APIs and JS SDK for easy integration
Optional: upcoming voice chats, XMPP adapter, full E2EE rollout per roadmap

🛠 Tech Stack

Frontend: React (web client), Flutter (mobile client)
Backend: Node.js, uWebSockets.js
Database: MongoDB
Auth: Custom (JWT/tokens via API)
Hosting: Docker, self-hosted; public cloud at app.samacloud.io

👥 Who Is This For?

This project is useful for:

Developers who want to add secure chat to web/mobile apps without proprietary dependencies
Teams looking for a scalable, open-source chat backend with clustering
Indie makers building messaging apps or communities