Opportunities › Private peer-to-peer team communication platform › Proposed app
Hearth Team Chat
Private team chat that stores messages on your own devices, not a vendor's cloud
- Score
- 33
- confidence 45
- Evidence
- 5
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 2
- named in sources
- First version
- 45 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop and mobile
- PWA: on computers and phones alike
- Market since
- 2013
- Mature market · AI estimate
ScreensConcept
Desktop and mobile: Teams use chat on phones throughout the day but conduct long working sessions on desktop—real communication happens on both and the app needs both to be effective. Sample screens on a computer and a phone, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
Team channels
All synced on-deviceAbout this appAI proposal
Hearth is a team chat app where messages stay on the devices of the people in the conversation. There is no central message server to breach, subpoena or switch off. Teams get channels, threads, direct messages and file sharing in a PWA that installs on phone and desktop.
It is for small and mid-size teams and privacy-conscious organizations that want data sovereignty without giving up the workflow they know from Slack or Discord. Admins can run an optional always-on team node on their own hardware so messages sync while laptops are asleep.
Unlike a hosted chat tool, Hearth treats your team as the owner of its history. Export, retention and member removal are controlled by the team, not a vendor.
- Tagline
- Team chat that lives on your devices, not on someone else's servers.
- Voice
- CalmDirectTrustworthy
- Why this name
- Hearth suggests a warm, private place where a team gathers, kept by its own members. It is short, plain and easy to say. A trademark check is still needed.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
Messages stay on member devices
Channels, threads and DMs are stored on participants' devices and synced directly between them. No central message store.
No member yet
Familiar channels and threads
Organize talk by topic, reply in threads, mention people and react. Built so a Slack or Discord user needs no training.
No member yet
Optional team node
Run a small always-on node on your own hardware so messages sync when members are offline. Keep it or remove it at any time.
No member yet
Private routing
Traffic can be routed over privacy networks so outsiders cannot easily see who the team talks to.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#1F3D36Deep Moss · primary#F6F3ECPaper · surface#1B1F1DInk · text#E0703AEmber · accent#8FB5A3Sage · data
Typography
Aa
Hearth Team Chat
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
Team chat that lives on your devices, not on someone else's servers.
PricingAI proposal
Slack's pricing page (verified) lists paid plans from €8.25 to €18 a month, plus a free plan and custom pricing for large customers. Tiers here sit below that range as a starting point to test.
Free
Free
- Up to 10 members
- Channels, threads, DMs
- Self-run sync only
Team
$6 a month
- Per member
- Unlimited members
- Hosted team node
- Archive export and retention rules
Sovereign
$12 a month
- Per member
- Self-hosted node license
- Key rotation and remote wipe
- Priority support
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$194,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- Users invite others. A team only works if members join. Each admin invites colleagues, and optionally guests such as clients or contractors, through a private invite link or QR code into a shared space.
- Do they become customers?
- Invited guests can become buyers if they run their own team. Test how many guest invitees from one team start a separate paid space within 60 days.
- First customers
- Small legal, health or security consultancies of 10 to 50 people whose partners already restrict what can be said in Slack.
- Where to reach them
- Privacy and self-hosting forums: Share a working demo and a plain write-up of where messages are stored in communities that discuss self-hosting.
- Direct outreach to consultancies: Contact managing partners or IT leads at small firms with confidentiality duties and offer a free pilot space.
- Open-source communities: Post on GitHub discussions of related peer-to-peer projects to reach teams already looking for alternatives.
- First milestone
- Five teams of 10+ people using Hearth daily for a month, and three of them paying for the team node.
Why people already pay for this
- VerifiedGitHub repository gained 2658 stars in 1759 days
- Public claimThere is demand for private, decentralized alternatives to Slack and Discord among teams concerned about data privacy and infrastructure independence.
- AI inferenceThe project has significant community interest and adoption, evidenced by open-source activity.
- AI inferenceThere is ongoing development and unresolved feature work in the ecosystem.
- Verified
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · Peer-to-peer syncBrowser-based P2P and CRDT libraryDevices need to sync messages directly and merge edits made offline.
- This app · Private networkingRelay nodes with optional Tor routingLets devices behind firewalls connect and hides who talks to whom.
RisksAI inference
- TechnicalPeer-to-peer sync across sleeping phones and strict firewalls is hard. Messages may arrive late without a team node, which can feel worse than Slack.
- CommercialTeams may accept centralized chat despite privacy concerns. The material shows interest in alternatives but no verified willingness to pay.
- PlatformPWAs on mobile have limited background sync and push notifications, especially on iOS, which hurts a chat product.
- RegulatoryNo central server makes retention, legal hold and e-discovery harder. Regulated buyers may need those features before they can adopt it.
- TechnicalKey management across many devices is complex. Lost devices or poor rotation could expose or lose a team's history.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.