HumHub is open-source software for a private social network run by an organization: a company intranet, a members' platform for an association or a federation, a space for every class of a school, a network of alumni. Members get profiles, spaces and a news stream they understand at once; administrators get permissions, modules and a look they control. CUZY hosts it for you and builds modules for it.
Developed in Germany since 2014 by HumHub GmbH & Co. KG, published under the AGPL, extended by more than 120 marketplace modules. The short fact sheet gives publisher, license, versions and the three ways to run it.
HumHub was designed for organizations, not for influencers: groups of people with a structure, roles and a life that lasts longer than a project. Find yours below. Each card says what administrators in that situation usually struggle with, and what HumHub gives them.
You run or administer a company of twenty to several thousand people, with offices, sites or shops.
The problem. Announcements vanish in email, documents live in five tools, and frontline staff have no company account on their phone.
With HumHub. A space per department, site or project with its own news, wiki, files, calendar and tasks; announcements that reach everyone by web, email and the mobile app; sign-in with the Microsoft or Google accounts people already have.
You are on the board or the staff of an association, a sports club, a charity or a parish, with volunteers who come and go.
The problem. The life of the organization runs on WhatsApp groups and mailing lists: newcomers miss the history, nobody knows who is still a member, and the data-protection question keeps coming back.
With HumHub. One space per activity or committee, the season's events with registrations, photo galleries, polls, a weekly digest for occasional volunteers, membership fees collected inside the platform.
You coordinate a federation, a franchise or a movement with dozens or hundreds of local groups, each run by its own people.
The problem. The national office cannot reach every member, local groups each pick their own tool, and nobody has a current list of who belongs where.
With HumHub. Spaces organized by region and theme, members added to the spaces of their region automatically, a map of groups and members, surveys of the whole network and mass notifications from the center.
You run a school, a faculty, a training center or an adult-education program.
The problem. Teachers, students and parents juggle email, a learning platform and chat groups; cohorts need a private place that ends with the year.
With HumHub. A space per class or cohort, courses with lessons, quizzes and certificates, registrations and evaluations by survey, a private channel between staff and parents, archived at the end of the year.
You animate an alumni association, a professional body or an order.
The problem. The directory is a spreadsheet, reunions are organized by email, and members in other cities never hear from each other.
With HumHub. A living directory by promotion, city and profession with a map, groups members join by themselves, reunions and mentoring circles, a newsletter people actually open.
You build a community around a brand, a product, a profession or a cause, with members who pay or qualify to join.
The problem. Community platforms charge by tier, own the member relationship and decide which features exist; a Facebook group gives you neither your brand nor your data.
With HumHub. A branded community on your own domain, paid memberships whose access ends when a subscription does, events, discussions by topic, members on a map, and the whole database exportable.
You work for a municipality, an agency, a hospital, a research institute or a cultural institution.
The problem. Procurement asks for open-source software and a hosting location you can name; staff, elected members, partners and citizen committees each need their own place.
With HumHub. Open-source software under the AGPL, hosting in the region you choose with a processor agreement, permissions per group and space, legal pages and consent built in, two-factor authentication.
You serve clients or partners who each need a private place to work with you.
The problem. Files go by email, questions arrive on three channels, and a shared tool would show one client the others.
With HumHub. A hidden space per client or partner with shared files, tasks, a support thread and news, invisible to everyone else; your brand on the whole platform.
Cooperatives, unions, parishes, patient groups, research networks and sports leagues are organized like an association or a federation: those two setups apply to them. Every use case in detail.
HumHub is a serious platform for organizing an organization. It is not every tool at once, and it works best next to the ones below rather than instead of them.
HumHub has private and group messaging, but a team that talks all day long wants a chat tool such as Slack, Mattermost or Rocket.Chat. Many organizations keep both: chat for the minute, HumHub for what must still be found next month.
HumHub stores and shares files per space. Versioned document libraries and office editing are the job of Nextcloud, SharePoint or Google Drive, and HumHub connects to Nextcloud and Collabora rather than replacing them.
HumHub runs courses for members, with lessons, quizzes and certificates. A creator who sells courses to strangers wants a platform built for that, such as Circle or Mighty Networks.
Public spaces and custom pages can be read by visitors, but HumHub is not a website builder. Keep your website in WordPress or your CMS and link to the community.
Everything in HumHub is one of these four things. Once an administrator understands them, the rest is configuration.
Every member has a profile with the fields you define (department, city, promotion, skills), a searchable directory, and groups that carry permissions. Members follow the people and spaces that concern them.
A space is a home for a team, a branch, a class, a committee or a client: public, private or hidden, with its own members, roles, stream and modules. Your organization chart becomes a list of spaces.
Posts with comments and likes, files, wiki pages, events, tasks and polls live in spaces and on profiles. Search finds what a member is allowed to see; notifications and an email digest bring back the people who do not log in every day.
Everything beyond the core is a module enabled per space: wiki, calendar, tasks, surveys, courses, maps, memberships, single sign-on. More than 120 are on the HumHub marketplace, installed from the administration screen.
The same software, set up differently: these are the eight setups we see most often, each a combination of spaces and modules. The links give the modules to enable.
Company news that reaches everyone, a space per department, documents and procedures in one place, sign-in with the company account.
Replace WhatsApp groups and mailing lists: one space per activity or branch, the season's events, members' fees and a weekly digest for occasional volunteers.
Hundreds of local groups organized by region and theme, each run by its own volunteers, with the national office able to reach everyone.
A space per class or cohort, courses with lessons and certificates, registrations and evaluations, and a private channel between staff and parents.
A branded community where members pay a yearly fee, meet at events, find each other on a map and discuss by topic.
A living directory by promotion and city, reunions, mentoring groups and a newsletter people actually read.
A private space per client or partner with shared files, tasks, a support thread and news, invisible to other clients.
Questions answered once and found by everyone, tickets for what must stay private, a knowledge base maintained by staff.
Without a single module installed, every HumHub gives you the following. What a hosted community includes says what is enabled from the first minute on CUZY Hosting.
Public, private or hidden areas for a team, a project, a branch or a class, each with its own members, roles, stream and modules.
Posts with rich text, images, files, mentions, topics, comments and likes, in every space and on every profile, plus a personal dashboard.
Member profiles with custom fields, a searchable directory, following and friendships.
Groups of users with permissions at the platform level, roles and permissions per space, and group managers.
Web and email notifications with per-member settings and a periodic email summary of activity.
Full-text search across spaces, people and content the member is allowed to see.
Open, approval-based or invitation-only registration, invitations by email or link.
The official HumHub app for iOS and Android connects to any community, and several communities can share one app.
The interface is translated into more than 30 languages; each member picks theirs.
An API module for integrations and a marketplace of more than 120 modules installed from the administration screen.
Modules are what turn HumHub into your platform, and what consumer apps and chat tools cannot offer. HumHub GmbH publishes 27 modules a hosted community can install, CUZY 34, and the marketplace holds more than 120 in all. Here is what they cover, by need.
Posts, news, notifications and messages that reach people where they are.
12 modules, for example Messenger, Mass Notification, Show Selected Content
Tasks, polls, meetings, video calls and documents edited together.
10 modules, for example Tasks, Polls, Meetings
A wiki, file libraries, galleries and questions answered once for everyone.
9 modules, for example Wiki, Files, Q&A
Plan meetings, trainings and reunions with participants and reminders.
3 modules, for example Calendar, External Calendar, Events Map
Forms, surveys, courses and the small things that make people come back.
5 modules, for example Survey, Advanced Survey, LMS — Learning Management System
Profiles, directories, self-service groups and members on a map.
7 modules, for example Members Map, Spaces Map, Advanced Profile
Sell access, subscriptions, tickets and products inside the community.
2 modules, for example eCommerce, HelloAsso
Permissions, sign-in rules, moderation, cleanup and statistics.
14 modules, for example Two-Factor Authentication, Legal Tools, Report Content
The accounts your people already have and the tools your organization runs.
11 modules, for example Keycloak Sign-In, Google Sign-In, LinkedIn Sign-In
A look and a navigation that match your organization.
8 modules, for example Clean Theme, Clean Theme Pro, Menu Manager
Every module, with price and availability The 34 CUZY modules
Eight reasons administrators give, each one you can check.
It looks like the social networks people already use: a profile, a stream, likes, comments, mentions. A volunteer or a new employee needs no training. The official app runs on iOS and Android, and the interface exists in more than 30 languages.
News, documents, events, tasks, surveys, courses and memberships share the same accounts, the same permissions and the same search. Fewer logins, fewer places where information gets lost.
Spaces mirror your structure, permissions follow your groups, and the look is yours: logo, colors, theme, menus, a tailored homepage, your own domain. Custom modules and themes are possible when a need is specific to you.
Surveys with exports, courses with certificates, members and events on a map, paid memberships, single sign-on with your identity provider, GDPR tooling, mass notifications: the things consumer apps and chat tools do not do, available as modules.
HumHub is published under the AGPL and every CUZY module is open source too. Export the database and the files any day, install them on your own server or with another provider, and your members find the same community. No vendor can switch it off.
On CUZY Hosting, Team €90/month or €900/year and Business €450/month or €4,500/year are priced per community, whatever the number of members. Including every employee, volunteer or member costs nothing extra.
Hosted on dedicated servers in Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC), with a processor agreement, legal pages and consent at registration, two-factor authentication, automatic cleanup of inactive accounts, no advertising and no AI service reading your content.
Developed in Germany by HumHub GmbH & Co. KG since 2014, used by companies, associations, universities and public bodies worldwide. CUZY has published modules for it since 2017 and runs communities on it with 14-day free trials.
The tools organizations usually consider first, and where each one leaves you. Figures about other products come from their own pricing pages, checked in October 2026; the linked pages carry the full tables and their sources.
| Question | Team chat (Slack, Microsoft Teams) | Facebook and WhatsApp groups | Community SaaS (Circle, Mighty Networks, Bettermode) | HumHub hosted by CUZY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Real-time conversation inside a team | Informal exchange between people who know each other | A creator or a brand selling access to a community | An organization with a structure: teams, branches, classes, members |
| Where information ends up | In a scrolling conversation; Slack's free plan hides messages older than 90 days | In a feed mixed with the members' personal network; files and events are hard to find again | In the vendor's spaces and posts, searchable while you subscribe | In the space it belongs to: posts, wiki pages, files, events, tasks, found by search and kept as long as you want |
| Price | Per user per month: Slack Pro €6.75 per active user, Microsoft 365 Business Basic $7.00 per user, billed yearly | Free of charge for the group; members use their personal Meta accounts under Meta's terms | By tier, billed yearly: Mighty Networks from $79, Circle from $89, Bettermode from $149 a month | Flat per community, unlimited members: Team €90/month or €900/year, Business €450/month or €4,500/year |
| Your brand and structure | A workspace name and logo; channels | The platform's look; one group | The vendor's layout with your logo and colors; spaces as the vendor defines them | Logo, colors, theme, menus, homepage and domain; spaces, roles and profile fields as you define them; custom modules on Business |
| Extensions | Apps from the vendor's marketplace | None | The features the vendor ships | More than 120 marketplace modules, installed from the administration screen: surveys, courses, maps, memberships, single sign-on and more |
| Who holds the data | The vendor, in its regions; Slack offers data residency from Business+ | Meta | The vendor; members exportable as CSV, content exports limited or on request | You: a complete export of the database and files any day, open-source code that runs anywhere, servers in Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC) |
| Sign-in | Slack: Google sign-in on Pro, SAML from Business+; Teams: Microsoft accounts | Personal Facebook account or phone number | Email and password; single sign-on on some tiers | Your identity provider (Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID, Google, any OpenID Connect provider) on every plan, trial included; two-factor authentication |
| Where it fits better | A team that talks all day | A circle of friends or neighbors | A creator selling courses to the public | An organization whose structure, knowledge and members must last |
Side by side: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Circle, Mighty Networks, Bettermode, leaving WhatsApp and Facebook groups, all comparisons. Why HumHub gives the questions to ask any vendor.
The software is the same; what changes is who does the server work.
Download the free community edition and run it on your own server: installation, updates, backups, email and security are yours. What self-hosting costs in hours; CUZY also maintains self-hosted instances.
HumHub GmbH sells a Professional Edition with its own modules (LDAP, SAML, enterprise theme) as SaaS or on-premise, priced per user tier. When it fits better than CUZY.
A community created in two minutes on dedicated servers in Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC), updates, backups and monitoring done for you, every CUZY module included, unlimited members. Team €90/month or €900/year, Business €450/month or €4,500/year. How the hosting works · Pricing.
For announcements, knowledge, events, members and everything that must still be found next month, yes. For real-time chat, no: HumHub has messaging, but it is built around spaces and a stream, not around a live conversation. Many organizations keep a chat tool for the team and use HumHub for the whole organization.
No. A club of thirty members and a federation of ten thousand run the same software; what changes is the number of spaces and the modules enabled. On CUZY Hosting the price is per community, so a small organization pays the same whether it has 30 or 3,000 members.
No. If they use Facebook or LinkedIn they can use HumHub: a profile, a stream, comments, likes and notifications. The official mobile app works on iOS and Android, and each member picks their own language among more than 30. Administration happens in the browser, without code.
Yes. Logo, colors and theme, the menu, a tailored homepage per audience and your own domain are standard. Profile fields, spaces, groups and permissions follow your structure. On the Business plan, CUZY installs custom modules and themes after review.
Both, as you decide. Each space is public, private or hidden, registration is open, by approval or by invitation only, and guest access can let visitors read public spaces without an account. Most organizations run a private platform with a few public spaces.
The software is free and open source (AGPL). What costs money is running it: your own server and a technical person, or managed hosting. CUZY Hosting is Team €90/month or €900/year or Business €450/month or €4,500/year with unlimited members and every CUZY module, after a free 14-day trial. Some marketplace modules are sold separately.
With CUZY, on dedicated servers in the region you choose, Germany (EU), the USA or Singapore (APAC), under a processor agreement. Subscribers download a complete export of the database and files from their dashboard any day, and the same community can be recreated on your own server or with another provider.
Create a free trial community: it is live in about two minutes with the usual modules enabled and every CUZY module installed, no card asked. Invite a few colleagues, create your first spaces, upload your logo. The trial lasts 14 days and everything stays when you subscribe.
A free 14-day trial community in two minutes, every CUZY module included, no card asked. Or start from the setup that matches your organization.
