Convos

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 746 words

Convos is what you run instead of a ZNC bouncer plus a separate client: one process that stays connected to your IRC networks around the clock, logs everything while you are away, and shows it to you in a browser tab or a phone PWA when you come back. It is the self-hosted answer to IRCCloud, and the second most popular tool in that shape; The Lounge is the first, with several times the community, and I will say up front that The Lounge is the safer default. Convos earns a look for being simpler to operate, needing no Node toolchain, and being pleasant for a small group of users on one instance.

One process, files on disk, 256 MB

Convos stores everything in a single home directory: user accounts, per-network connection settings, and message logs as plain files organised by network, channel and date. There is no database. The Docker image runs on port 8080 and needs one volume:

services:
  convos:
    image: convos/convos:stable
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./convos-data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped

The first account you register becomes the admin, and registration then closes to invitation links you generate from the admin page. A reverse proxy in front for TLS is the only other piece; Convos relies on WebSockets, so make sure the proxy passes them. Idle memory sits well under the 256 MB in the listing; a handful of users on a dozen channels each does not move it.

The multi-user angle is the point

The Lounge also supports multiple users, but Convos was designed around a small instance shared by a team, a family or a study group, each person with their own networks and channels, all on one hostname. Invitations, a per-user connection to Libera, OFTC or a private network, and per-user logs make it a reasonable "our IRC" for a community that has resisted Discord. Notifications arrive in the browser or through the PWA on a phone; there is no native mobile app and no push service to configure, which is a limitation and a feature.

Logs are files, which is the backup plan

Every channel and private conversation is written to a plain log file per day under the data directory, and the web UI searches across them. Nothing is stored in a format you need Convos to read: grep works, and so does pointing a static site generator at a decade of channel history if you want a public archive. Backup is tar on the directory with the container stopped, or a filesystem snapshot with it running. Set CONVOS_HOME if you run outside Docker; inside the image it already points at the mounted volume.

What it will not do

Voice, video, file storage, reactions, threads. IRC is text, and Convos does not try to hide that. If your group wants those things, it wants Matrix or a self-hosted chat server, and the communication category has them. Convos also does not bridge to other protocols; it is an IRC client and only that. The upside is that the whole thing is comprehensible: logs are files, configuration is a handful of environment variables, backup is copying one directory.

Convos versus The Lounge

The Lounge has more polish, more themes, a larger plugin surface, and far more people who have hit any given bug before you. It runs on Node and stores messages in SQLite. Convos is smaller, ships as a single container with fewer moving parts, and its logs-as-files approach is friendlier to grep and to long-term archiving. Performance on the same box is comparable. If you are the only user and want the nicest client, The Lounge. If you are hosting for 5 to 30 people and want the least operational surface, Convos is a fair choice. Either beats running WeeChat in tmux on a server for anyone who wants to read from a phone, though WeeChat remains the power user's answer.

What I'd do

For a personal bouncer, The Lounge. For a small community instance, Convos on the stable image behind Caddy, data directory in the nightly backup, invitations only, and a note in the group wiki about which networks are configured. IRC in 2026 is a deliberate choice for people who value plain text and 30 years of stable protocol over features; if that is you, Convos makes it comfortable without pretending to be Slack.