Only people the platform owner added or invited. There is no public sign-up; the email domain restriction is an extra safeguard.
Owner-managed on-prem intranet
Your team's communication hub. Your door, your data.
A Discord-style server, channel and voice experience; an intranet on your own server where the owner decides who gets in. For hybrid and remote teams: daily communication, voice rooms, screen sharing, announcement channels and moderation in one package.
- On-prem
- Owner-managed membership
- Turkish and English
- Installable PWA
- Voice and screen sharing
Internative runs its own internal communication on Lodge: live.internative.net.
Internative runs its own internal communication on this platform.
- One server, the whole package
- Text + voice + video + screen
- No public sign-up
- Discord habits, corporate control
Your door
No public sign-up; the owner decides who gets in.
The platform owner adds people, invites them by email and suspends them at any time. Someone from outside cannot open an account in any way unless you add them. Even invite links only move people already let in into a server.
Platform owner
Defined at install; there can be more than one
Manages who can sign in: adds, invites, suspends, reopens; appoints other owners and admins; sees every server.
Server owner and admin
Whoever sets up a server (a department, a project, a team) or is given the rights
Channels, roles, permissions, invite links, moderation, audit log.
Member
Everyone the owner let in
Sees and writes in the channels they are allowed, joins voice rooms; manages their profile.
The owner adds the person
Name and business email in the admin panel; the email domains allowed to sign in can be restricted on the server, for example @yourcompany.com only. The person becomes a member of the default server.
An invite email goes out
It carries a sign-in link; no password to set, no form to fill.
The person signs in
With a 6-digit one-time code sent to their email, or with their Google Workspace account. The account activates on first sign-in.
One list
Who was added, who has not signed in yet, who is active, who is suspended; with last sign-in time.
Suspend in one click
Every session drops, sign-in closes, the data stays in place. Reopening is one click too.
Step-up verification
Ownership transfer and admin changes ask for an extra email code; they cannot be done from a device left signed in.
Remembered devices
A device list, sign-out per device or all at once, an email on sign-in from a new device. Every add, suspension and role change goes to the audit log.
Why on-prem
Three reasons, all three in your favour.
What sets it apart from cloud chat tools is not a feature list but who holds the control.
Your data stays yours
Messages, files, voice rooms, member lists: on your server, in your database. No account in a third party's cloud; the inventory of processed data is documented for KVKK and GDPR work.
Predictable cost
A licence per install instead of a monthly cloud bill per user; text, voice, video and screen sharing together on one server. No separate products to licence, nothing to integrate piece by piece.
Your rules
Who gets in, who sees what, how long it is kept: all of it your server-side settings. One permission engine gives the same answer at the REST, realtime, file and media boundaries.
Who it is for
Any team or community that wants to hold its own door.
The common thread is the same: a closed circle, a familiar chat model, and data that stays on your own infrastructure. In every segment the owner holds the door.
Software houses and agencies
A server per department and project; stand-up voice rooms, pair work over screen sharing, support and ops on-call channels.
Hybrid and remote teams
Always-on voice rooms become the office corridor; announcement channels, @mentions and the notification centre leave nobody out.
Finance, healthcare and legal
Privacy-sensitive sectors: business email domain restriction, an audit log, data kept in-country and on your own infrastructure.
Defence suppliers and public affiliates
Every external service can be switched off or replaced with a local equivalent; a fully on-prem install is possible.
Esports teams and gaming communities
The same habits as Discord, but team management controls membership. Quality and capacity per voice channel, channel passwords, noise suppression; a Windows in-game overlay on request.
Agency and client communities
A server per client; the owner invites the client's team and suspends it when the project ends. Client data is never shared with a third party.
Schools and academic groups
A server per department and course, student and instructor roles, voice office hours, live captions; graduates suspended from one list at term end.
NGOs, associations and closed hobby communities
A members-only community hub on a single VPS, without the data and ownership problems of free cloud products.
Features
One server, the whole package.
Text, voice, video, screen sharing, notifications and moderation; all in an installable web app, all behind the same permission engine.
Servers, channels, roles
- Text and voice channels under categories, drag-and-drop ordering
- Hierarchical roles with icons and colours; allow / deny / inherit overrides at server and channel level
- Per channel: slow mode, channel password, user limit and bitrate on voice channels, temporary channels
- Ownership transfer with two-sided approval and step-up verification
Messaging
- Persistent channel messages with fast history; edit, delete, reply, pin, emoji reactions
- @mentions (people and channels), typing indicator, unread and read position
- Direct messages and group chats; friend requests and a message-request flow
- Image, audio, PDF, Office and archive attachments; server-side signature checks and ClamAV malware scanning
Voice, camera, screen sharing
- LiveKit voice rooms: join, mute, deafen, camera; automatic reconnect on short drops
- RNNoise noise suppression in the browser, a mic level meter, voice activity calibration
- Viewer-side quality choice for screen sharing: auto, 360p, 540p, 720p, 1080p
- Live captions (Turkish and English), member move, invite to a voice channel
Identity and access
- Closed membership: only people the owner added; no sign-up screen
- Sign in by email code or Google Workspace; allowed email domain restriction
- Step-up verification, remembered device sessions, new-device alert
- Brute-force and address-scan protection; answers that never reveal whether an account exists
Moderation and security
- Kick, ban, timed mute, slow mode, channel password
- User reporting and a platform-level safety workflow
- Immutable audit log: actor, target, before/after, reason, timestamp
- Files in a private object store, served only on an authorised request; no public URL
App experience
- Installable PWA: like an app on desktop and mobile; no store approval, updates straight from the server
- Web push notifications (optional), a notification centre
- Accent colour palette and background themes, per device; profile, avatar, social links, status
- Turkish and English interface; keyboard accessibility, reduced-motion support
Voice, camera, screen sharing
The office corridor: always-on voice rooms.
Voice rooms are persistent; not a meeting link waiting at the door but a room you walk in and out of. Noise is suppressed in the browser, the viewer picks the screen-share quality, speech turns into live captions.
Noise suppression in the browser
RNNoise cleans mic noise on the device; the level meter and voice activity calibration tune to your own headset. Input and output device selection.
Screen sharing the viewer controls
Auto, 360p, 540p, 720p or 1080p; the received resolution and FPS shown as they are. The presenter sees who is watching.
Live captions
Browser speech recognition turns speech into live captions; source language Turkish or English.
No side door
Media tokens are short-lived and permission-bound; there is no way into a voice room without permission. Automatic reconnect on short connection drops.
Security and compliance
One permission engine, enforced on the server.
The same permission evaluator runs again at every boundary: REST, realtime broadcast, file access, notification generation and media tokens. There is no path that hides in the interface and allows on the server.
- Content security policy (CSP), strict security headers, same-origin cookie policy
- Rate limiting, brute-force and address-scan protection
- Signed file access; files served only on an authorised request
- Short-lived, purpose-bound tokens: media, channel access, step-up verification
- Immutable audit log with a correlation id
- Data residency: database, files and voice traffic on the servers you choose; an inventory of processed data for KVKK and GDPR work
Honest limits
- Data that leaves for an external service in the default install: Google OAuth if Google sign-in is used; the email provider you choose; only a title and summary if push is on; Cloudflare if files are on R2. Each can be switched off or replaced with a local equivalent.
- There is no end-to-end encryption; encryption is in transit (TLS) and at rest.
- Retention periods and deletion policies are install settings; no period is stated on this page.
Architecture
One domain, one origin, open technologies.
The PWA, the API, the realtime broadcast and the LiveKit signal under one domain; Caddy in front with automatic TLS. Built on modern open technologies, not a black box.
Client and edge
- Installable PWA (Next.js, React)
- Caddy: automatic TLS, WebSocket, one origin
Application
- API (Node.js): identity, membership, servers, channels, roles, messages, files
- Realtime gateway (Socket.IO, Redis adapter)
- Background worker (BullMQ): email queue, scheduled clean-up
- LiveKit (WebRTC SFU): voice, camera, screen sharing
Data
- MongoDB: the persistent source; messages, memberships, audit log
- Redis: presence, rate limiting, code state, queues, pub/sub
- S3-compatible object store: attachments, authorised access
MongoDB persists, Redis can be rebuilt
Losing Redis is not losing data.
Layered structure
Transport, application, domain and infrastructure kept apart; the storage provider or the email transport can be swapped.
Short-lived tokens
Purpose-bound tokens for media, channel access and step-up verification.
Transparent releases
Change notes and architecture decision records live in the product repository; the customer reads what changed and why.
How it is installed
On your server in four steps.
One server is the recommended start; a separate database and a hybrid with cloud storage are options too. Installation, monitoring and updates managed by Internative are offered as a service.
Prepare the server
Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04; Node, MongoDB, Redis, LiveKit and Caddy installed from the runbook.
Fill in the environment file
Domain, email, storage, the Google OAuth client, the allowed email domain.
Deploy
One command through GitHub Actions, or build + PM2. Rollback is redeploying the previous release.
The first owner signs in
The first platform owners are created automatically; the owner signs in with an email code and starts inviting the team.
Load-test and database index verification tools ship with the product; the health endpoint reports the MongoDB, Redis, storage, push and email dependencies.
Typical starting sizes
A recommendation based on the architecture; the exact numbers are verified against your load profile with the load-test tools that ship with the product.
| Up to 50 users, about 10 concurrent voice participants | 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB SSD | Everything on one machine |
| Up to 250 users, about 40 concurrent voice participants | 4 vCPU · 8 GB RAM · 80 GB SSD | 7881/tcp and 7882/udp open for LiveKit |
| Up to 1,000 users, about 100 concurrent voice participants | 8 vCPU · 16 GB RAM · 160 GB SSD + separate MongoDB | With heavy screen sharing, bandwidth decides |
Bandwidth rule of thumb: about 64 to 128 kbps per voice participant; about 2 to 4 Mbps per viewer for 1080p screen sharing.
Comparison
The products it sits next to.
The difference is not a feature list: the Discord interaction model, on-prem hosting, owner-managed closed membership, and voice and video in one package.
| Lodge | Discord | Slack | Mattermost / Rocket.Chat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Your own server | Cloud only | Cloud only | Your own server |
| Membership door | Owner adds and invites; no public sign-up | Public invite links | Domain or invite | Invite or optional open sign-up |
| Interaction model | Server, channel, role, voice room | Same | Workspace, channel | Workspace, channel |
| Persistent voice rooms | Yes | Yes | Huddle (temporary) | Limited or plugin |
| 1080p screen sharing | Yes | Paid tier | Yes | Varies |
| Google Workspace sign-in | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit log | Yes | Yes | Paid tier | Yes |
| Licence | Commercial, source access | Closed SaaS | Closed SaaS | Open source + commercial |
Competitor features may change; no price comparison is made.
Enterprise add-ons
Grows with your organisation; on request, per project.
The core product today is the list above. In enterprise projects the identity, HR and mobile side is built by Internative around your organisation's systems; none of it is sold as a ready switch.
- On request
SSO and directory
Corporate single sign-on over SAML or OIDC, membership sync with LDAP and Active Directory: when someone leaves the directory, they leave Lodge too.
- On request
HR and intranet modules
Leave requests, payslip notifications, corporate announcements and document flows; integrated with your existing HR and ERP systems through channels and bots of your own.
- On request
Native mobile app
The PWA installs on desktop and mobile today; native iOS and Android packages published on the organisation's own store accounts are built per project.
- Roadmap
Webhook and bot API
Automatic messages into channels from CI, monitoring and support systems; in an enterprise project first, in the product with the roadmap.
- On request
Windows in-game overlay
A voice HUD on top of the game for gaming communities: who is in the room, who is speaking. No DLL injection or anti-cheat interference; read-only, a signed Windows package.
- At install
Brand and customisation
Logo and domain at install; accent colour and theme per user; deeper customisation per project under the source-access licence.
Coming
Roadmap; not claimed on this page today.
Not presented as existing features; when one enters the product the page will say so.
Threads and forum channels
ComingThreads inside a channel, forum-style channels.
Search and archive
ComingFull-text search, message archive export.
Webhook, bot API and SSO
ComingWebhook and bot API; SSO over SAML and OIDC; membership sync with LDAP and AD.
Retention policies
ComingConfigurable retention per channel and direct message.
Bulk invites
ComingBulk invites by CSV, pre-approved joining by invite link.
Scaling
ComingMulti-node LiveKit and a horizontal scaling guide; native mobile app packages.
How you get it
Five steps from discovery to operations support.
A licence per install with source access; installation and go-live, managed operation and SLA-backed support as services. Contact us for pricing.
Discovery
Team size, server and channel structure, the identity model (Google Workspace or email code) and the data residency requirement are mapped.
Sizing
One server, a separate database or hybrid storage is chosen by user and concurrent voice profile.
Installation and go-live
Server preparation from the runbook, the environment file, deployment; the first owners are created, the domain restriction is set.
Servers and team
Department and project servers, roles and permissions are set up; the team is invited, moderators are trained.
Operations support
Updates, monitoring and support are operated by Internative; an optional 24/7 SLA.
A single-server, community-supported tier for small communities is planned too; membership stays owner-managed.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Suspend them from the admin panel; every session drops at once and their data stays in place. You can reopen if needed.
In MongoDB on your server; files in the S3-compatible store you choose. All of it on one machine if you like.
Hundreds of users and tens of concurrent voice participants on one server; a scaling guide and load-test tools ship with the product.
Yes, as an installable PWA; push notifications are supported. Native iOS and Android packages are built on request in an enterprise project.
The same mental model: server, channel, role, voice room. User training is barely needed.
No; sign-in by email code offers the same closed model. Organisations on Google sign in with one click. SSO over SAML or OIDC is integrated in an enterprise project.
Yes, per project: leave, payslip notifications, announcements and document flows integrated with your existing HR and ERP systems, through channels and bots of your own.
Accent colour and theme per user; logo and domain at install; deeper customisation per project under the source-access licence.
A commercial licence with source access; the right to updates for the licence term. Deployment is one command, rollback is redeploying the previous release. Contact us for details.
Let us hand you your team's door.
We map your server structure, identity model and data residency requirements together; the demo runs on Internative's own install.
Internative: since 2017, 100+ enterprise clients, 400+ projects.
Request a demo
Tell us your user count and scenario; we will come back with the install scope and a quote.