Valour

What Valour does

• Communities are called planets. A planet can contain chat channels, thread feeds, wikis, voice and video channels, roles, an economy, and a village, and the client keeps several conversations open in tabs and panes.[1][2]

• Every chat message is end-to-end encrypted by default in direct chats, group chats, and planet channels. The server stores and relays ciphertext and signed metadata and refuses unencrypted client messages.[1]

• Planets have call channels and direct and group conversations support private calls, using Cloudflare RealtimeKit or LiveKit; a planet can also point at its own LiveKit server.[1]

• Bots use account tokens with the same API and permission system as the client through the .NET SDK, and planets also accept OAuth applications and incoming webhooks for connecting other systems.[1]

Who it fits

• Groups that want Discord-style community chat without tracking, ads, or identity checks: the official comparison is built around exactly those differences, and a built-in importer recreates Discord channels, roles, and permissions.[1][2]

• Operators who want to own their community infrastructure. The documented Compose bundle with PostgreSQL, Redis, and Caddy plus federation nodes fits groups that already run Docker services.[1][2]

• Privacy-sensitive communities that register with only an email address and want encrypted chat by default rather than as an opt-in setting.[1][2]

Limitations to weigh

• There is no iOS app yet, so iPhone and iPad members must use the browser client until a native app ships.[1]

• Encryption covers chat text, not everything: file uploads are not encrypted and public threads and wiki pages stay unencrypted so they can appear on the website and in search engines.[1]

• Self-hosting carries real operational load: a public domain, open web ports, secret management, backups, and a mandatory data-protection key that, if lost or changed, makes stored keys unreadable.[1]

Integration and hosting model