Focalboard

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted project management tool positioned as an alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana. Where Notion combines documents and databases in a freeform workspace, Focalboard is structured around boards — Kanban, Table, Gallery, and Calendar views of cards with custom attributes, filters, and saved views. It is geared more toward task and milestone tracking than long-form writing.

Focalboard ships in two editions: a single-user Personal Desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and a multi-user Personal Server. The desktop app runs locally without a server and is suitable for personal task tracking. For team deployments, the active path is the separately maintained Mattermost Boards plugin, which integrates boards directly inside Mattermost.

Focalboard is open source and self-hostable, with the source published on GitHub under the mattermost-community organisation. The standalone repository is currently in maintenance mode — the README explicitly notes it is unmaintained and is looking for new maintainers. The most actively developed variant is the Mattermost Boards plugin, which is the recommended path for new team installs.

Focalboard supports JSON-based archive and backup snapshots of boards, which makes migrating or preserving state straightforward. It also ships pre-built templates for project tasks, content calendars, OKRs, roadmaps, and meeting agendas to seed a new workspace. Card comments, @mentions, and per-board permissions cover the collaboration layer once teams are onboarded.