I'm excited to try this out! (seems to have some bandwidth issues, currently downloading at 24KB/s) Is SSO implemented or planned in the near future? I feel that colanode would be a great fit for our start-up
sadly, app doesn't run on Intel Macs
Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#12This looks great, it's a crowded field but there's still a lot of room for improvement. The most important question before I'd try this is, do real time cross platform notifications work? If yes, how did you solve this for people self hosting?
That's a great question! We didn't come to it yet, because we are focused only in desktop app for now. This is definitely one of the challenges we need to solve once we start working on the mobile apps. The self-hosting use case makes it tricky (and probably fun challenge to solve).
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#13> Colanode consists of a Node.js server API and an Electron desktop client Is the Electron app a necessity or is using a browser possible as well?
Hi! For now, Colanode is available only as a desktop app (Electron). The primary reason is that we wanted to implement some local-first features, which are currently more complex to achieve in the browser.
Curious which features? I'm starting a local-first project and would love to make a PWA, but I just don't think the platform is ready yet.
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#14Anything that starts as Open source but is clearly meant to be a for profit
product makes me sceptical.
The page has a link "Pricing" that takes to a page that says its coming up.
Well I will wait and see what and how the pricing structure will be revealed.
It is a product that easily lends itself to being a "little vit free and open source" and then all the for profit add ons are $$$$$ and not open sourced .
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#15Anything that starts as Open source but is clearly meant to be a for profit product makes me sceptical. The page has a link "Pricing" that takes to a page that says its coming up. Well I will wait and see what and how the pricing structure will be revealed. It is a product that easily lends itself to being a "little vit free and open source" and then all the for profit add ons are $$$$$ and not open sourced .
Wouldn't surprise me if it's just cloud hosting and maintenance for a fee. Might not be an indicator of dark patterns.
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#16Do you have plans for mobile app? It looks really useful but the two places I would use it would both require I mobile app before I could switch to it.
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi! For now, Colanode is available only as a desktop app (Electron). The primary reason is that we wanted to implement some local-first features, which are currently more complex to achieve in the browser.
Curious which features? I'm starting a local-first project and would love to make a PWA, but I just don't think the platform is ready yet.
Mainly using SQLite and having access to native file system for reading and writing files. We wanted to provide a full offline functionality. While it's possible to achieve that in browser as well it seemed quite complicated for now (we might consider it in the future).
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#18Do you have plans for mobile app? It looks really useful but the two places I would use it would both require I mobile app before I could switch to it.
Hi, thanks for the question! Yes, we do plan to implement mobile apps, but we don't have a concrete timeline yet. It depends on the limitations and challenges we might face when we implement the same local-first approach as we did in desktop (full offline support, background syncing etc).
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#19This looks very interesting purely because I can just about see from the very fast gif on the README that it has tasks in there, how much of a first class citizen they are of the app could be really important. It blows my mind that both Slack and Notion have such half-arsed task implementations - every time I need to introduce better, asynchronous task assignments at work I get pushback over "people won't use yet ano…
> A single app that lets a team manage work without constant interruptions would be the dream.
I can see how it can work, using a native application client to interface to something like develops or jira and then bolt on instant messaging (or the reverse).
The question is, can I get a company to open their wallets for this? From experience, I think not, but i am open to being convinced.
Re: Show HN: Colanode, open-source and local-first Slack and Notion alternative
#20Hello! How does this compare to Huly?
Hi, thanks for the question! I haven’t used Huly extensively to provide a detailed comparison, but from a quick look (and a test I did some time ago) it seems to take a more opinionated approach: features such as issues, projects, and overall layout are pre-defined. Colanode, by contrast, works like Notion, giving you flexible building blocks so you can model your own workflows and knowledge structures. Huly may be quicker to get started with, while Colanode offers greater adaptability over time (this comes down to personal preference). Another key distinction is tech architecture: Colanode is built around a local-first design, providing full offline support with background syncing. I haven’t found equivalent offline capabilities documented for Huly, even though they may have them.