ProjectSend
Share files with your clients, from your own server.
ProjectSend is a self-hosted application for getting files to the people you work with. You upload what you want to send, choose exactly who can see it, and each client signs in to their own private page to download it.
No public link passed around by email, no third-party service holding your clients' documents, no per-seat pricing. It runs on your server, and the files stay there.
Prefer not to run the server yourself? ProjectSend Cloud is the official hosted version of ProjectSend, run by the same team — every subscription funds this free software. The line between the free core and Cloud, and the commitments that go with it, are set out in LICENSING.md.
What it does
For the people you send to
- A private area per client, showing only what has been shared with them
- Sign in with an email address, with optional two-factor authentication
- Search, filter and sort their files; download one, several as a zip, or a whole folder
- Optional comments on a file, so questions live next to the thing they are about
- Email notifications when something new arrives, in their own language
For you
- Resumable uploads that survive a dropped connection, so large files actually arrive
- Organise with folders, categories and client groups
- Share with one client, a whole group, or publicly — and set an expiry date or a download limit
- Thumbnails and previews for images and documents
- Storage quotas per client, and custom fields for the details you need to keep on them
- A full activity log and download history: who got what, and when
For the installation
- Roles and permissions for your own team, so an uploader is not an administrator
- Sign-in the way you already work: LDAP, social sign-in, or plain email and password
- Themes for the client-facing pages and for outgoing email
- 16 languages
- A REST API with scoped tokens and generated OpenAPI docs
- Privacy controls, including GDPR-grade account erasure with a grace period
- Local disk, S3-compatible storage, or Google Cloud Storage
Getting started
With Docker — the quickest path, and the one we recommend. Nothing to build: the published image ships with its dependencies and its frontend already compiled.
You need Docker Engine with the Compose plugin. If the machine does not have it yet,
install it and then
let your own user run it: add yourself
to the docker group, then log out and back in. Without that step every command below fails with
"permission denied", and putting sudo in front of it is not the fix.
Then, in an empty directory of your choosing — /srv/projectsend is a good one — run:
curl -o compose.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectsend/projectsend/main/docker/production/compose.example.yaml
# edit the passwords and APP_URL in compose.yaml, then:
docker compose up -d
Every docker compose command in these guides runs from that same directory, and finds the file
because it is called compose.yaml. If you saved it under its original name, compose.example.yaml,
rename it: mv compose.example.yaml compose.yaml.
Open APP_URL and the first thing you see is a setup screen that creates your administrator
account — or uncomment ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD in the file first, with a password of
your own, and it is created for you.
Before you put real files in it, read DOCKER.md — where your database and uploads actually live, how to move them onto paths you chose, and how to back them up so an upgrade can't take them with it.
Without Docker — for servers where it isn't an option, install from a release zip.
INSTALL.md covers requirements, .env, nginx, the background worker and cron,
updating and troubleshooting. You do not need Composer or npm on the server; the zip ships ready to
run.
Already running it? UPDATE.md is how you move to a new version — one command on Docker, one script on your own server, and what to check afterwards either way.
Want to work on ProjectSend itself? Cloning the repository gets you a development copy, not an installation: the dependencies and the compiled frontend are deliberately not in git, so a clone needs Composer and npm before it runs. CONTRIBUTING.md has the sequence, and it is short.
Screenshots
The dashboard — what is in the installation, and what has been happening in it.
Your library — folders, categories, and who each file is shared with.
What your client sees — only their files, nothing else.
Coming from ProjectSend Legacy?
The previous generation of ProjectSend lives on at projectsend/legacy. This is a rebuild rather than an upgrade, so moving across is an import rather than an update — install fresh, then bring your old site into it with the migration tool: accounts, clients, groups, categories, folders, files and history.
It never writes to your old install, and any run can be undone with a single command. MIGRATING-FROM-V1.md explains what comes across, the two routes (same machine, or a portable export from a server you can't reach), and the one change your clients will notice: they sign in with their email address now, using the same password.
Contributing
Bug reports, translations and pull requests are all welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to set up a development copy, what the checks are, and the contributor agreement.
Found a security issue? Please report it privately through GitHub's security advisories rather than opening a public issue.
License
Free software under the GNU General Public License v2, or (at your option) any later version — see LICENSE. Use it, study it, change it, share it.
Commercial licenses are available for organizations that cannot work under copyleft terms; LICENSING.md explains both options. Contributions require signing a CLA, for reasons set out in CONTRIBUTING.md.