Haven is a self-hostable, MIT-licensed private blogging application built with Ruby on Rails, made for people who want to write for a known circle of friends and family rather than publish to the open web.

What it is

Haven is a blogging application written in Ruby on Rails. It lives in the self-hosted and decentralized-web corner of the Ruby ecosystem, and its central design decision is that there is no self-signup: the blog owner creates accounts for the people they want to share with. Reading happens through private RSS feeds and a built-in RSS reader that follows other blogs and other Havens, so a small group can keep up with each other without a social network in the middle.

The concrete problem it addresses is the public-registration blog. On a conventional blogging platform, anyone can register, comment, and scrape, which means spam, trackers, and ad infrastructure come along with the publishing tool. Haven removes that surface entirely: with no self-signup, there is no place for unauthorized users to impact the blog. It also targets low-bandwidth reading, with image downscaling, no JavaScript frameworks, and no ads or trackers, so pages stay light for readers on slow connections.

Key capabilities

• Built-in web interface for managing users, customizing the blog, and writing and editing posts with markdown and live preview.
• Private RSS feeds that let friends follow the blog without a public account.
• Built-in RSS reader for following other blogs and other Havens.
• Media support for images, videos, and audio, with automatic image downscaling to reduce page load times.
• Customization through custom CSS or fonts.
• No self-signup for users, which removes the spam and unauthorized-access vector.
• Containerized deployment through the included Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml.

Who uses it and how

• Small private groups: a writer creates accounts for friends and family and shares posts through private RSS, with no public signup path.
• Raspberry Pi and low-power self-hosters, who run it on hardware they own and keep the data on that hardware.
• AWS users, who clone the repo, enter the deploymentscripts folder, and run ruby deploy-aws.rb " " to deploy to an EC2 instance with a Route 53 domain and an HTTPS certificate; the script prints login information and can take around 20 minutes.
• Readers in low-bandwidth environments, who benefit from downscaled images, no JavaScript frameworks, and no ads or trackers.

Getting started

The simplest self-hosted route is Docker: install docker and docker-compose, clone the repository, run cd haven, then docker compose up, after which Haven listens on port 3000. Managed one-click hosting is also offered through PikaPods and Caliber Node, and fully managed hosting is available directly from the author.

How it compares

The README names WordPress and Ghost as the better choices for a company blog, positioning Haven instead as a private-sharing tool whose MIT licence and self-hosting make the operator the owner of the content and the account list. It is not a competitor to those platforms on features; it competes on the absence of public registration, ads, and trackers.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the deployment themselves, which means Docker and Docker Compose, or an AWS account with EC2 and Route 53 scripts, plus a domain and an HTTPS certificate request. Anyone who needs a public, commercially oriented blog with open registration should not pick it; the README points that audience to WordPress or Ghost. The Heroku path is explicitly limited: it is meant for exploration and experimentation, uploaded images usually disappear within 24 hours, the reader does not update automatically until the reader page is visited, and it will probably cost around $16 per month now that Heroku eliminated its free tier.