Setup ended by handing somebody a login form and an empty dashboard. Everything this application can do was one menu away, and which menu was theirs to discover. The first time the administrator signs in to a new installation they now land on a short ordered list of what is worth doing first — add a client, upload a file, group the people who get the same things, choose how the file lists and the email look, point it at a mail server, add the team, check the scheduler — each a link straight to the screen that does it. The list is filtered twice, and both filters matter. By permission, because a link that answers 403 is worse than no link. And by edition: a managed installation is not sent off to configure a mail server somebody else runs, to create staff accounts that are not its to create, or to check a scheduler it does not host. Those three drop out on Cloud and the other five remain. Two steps tick themselves, because the database can answer them: a client exists, a file exists. Nothing else is checkable without guessing — a theme that was never changed looks exactly like one chosen deliberately — and a tick meaning "we assume so" is worse than no tick. The invitation to the Discord is at the very bottom, after the list. Somebody who has just installed this came with a job in mind, and opening with a social invitation is the fastest way to lose them. The marker is raised where a first administrator comes into existence — the setup screen and `projectsend:admin`, so a container provisioned from environment variables is welcomed too — and it is false by default, so an installation that updates into this feature is not congratulated on an install it finished a year ago. RedirectToWhatsNew becomes RedirectToGreeting and answers for both: they are the same interruption, and a second middleware on the same route would have to know about the first to avoid arguing with it. Installing wins; release notes for a version you never ran are the wrong greeting. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ProjectSend
Share files with your clients, from your own server.
ProjectSend is a self-hosted application for getting files to the people you work with. You upload what you want to send, choose exactly who can see it, and each client signs in to their own private page to download it.
No public link passed around by email, no third-party service holding your clients' documents, no per-seat pricing. It runs on your server, and the files stay there.
What it does
For the people you send to
- A private area per client, showing only what has been shared with them
- Sign in with an email address, with optional two-factor authentication
- Search, filter and sort their files; download one, several as a zip, or a whole folder
- Optional comments on a file, so questions live next to the thing they are about
- Email notifications when something new arrives, in their own language
For you
- Resumable uploads that survive a dropped connection, so large files actually arrive
- Organise with folders, categories and client groups
- Share with one client, a whole group, or publicly — and set an expiry date or a download limit
- Thumbnails and previews for images and documents
- Storage quotas per client, and custom fields for the details you need to keep on them
- A full activity log and download history: who got what, and when
For the installation
- Roles and permissions for your own team, so an uploader is not an administrator
- Sign-in the way you already work: LDAP, social sign-in, or plain email and password
- Themes for the client-facing pages and for outgoing email
- 16 languages
- A REST API with scoped tokens and generated OpenAPI docs
- Privacy controls, including GDPR-grade account erasure with a grace period
- Local disk or S3-compatible storage
Screenshots
The dashboard — what is in the installation, and what has been happening in it.
Your library — folders, categories, and who each file is shared with.
What your client sees — only their files, nothing else.
Getting started
With Docker — the quickest path, and the one we recommend.
git clone https://github.com/projectsend/projectsend.git
cd projectsend
cp .env.example .env # set PROJECTSEND_EDITION=community
docker compose up -d
The app is at http://localhost:8090, and the first thing it shows you is a setup screen that
creates your administrator account.
Before you put real files in it, read DOCKER.md — where your database and uploads actually live, how to move them onto paths you chose, and how to back them up so an upgrade can't take them with it.
Without Docker — for servers where it isn't an option, install from a release zip.
INSTALL.md covers requirements, .env, nginx, the background worker and cron,
updating and troubleshooting. You do not need Composer or npm on the server; the zip ships ready to
run.
Already running it? UPDATE.md is how you move to a new version — one command on Docker, a short sequence on your own server, and what to check afterwards either way.
Coming from ProjectSend Legacy?
The previous generation of ProjectSend lives on at projectsend/legacy. This is a rebuild rather than an upgrade, so moving across is an import rather than an update — install fresh, then bring your old site into it with the migration tool: accounts, clients, groups, categories, folders, files and history.
It never writes to your old install, and any run can be undone with a single command. MIGRATING-FROM-V1.md explains what comes across, the two routes (same machine, or a portable export from a server you can't reach), and the one change your clients will notice: they sign in with their email address now, using the same password.
Contributing
Bug reports, translations and pull requests are all welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to set up a development copy, what the checks are, and the contributor agreement.
Found a security issue? Please report it privately through GitHub's security advisories rather than opening a public issue.
License
Free software under the GNU General Public License v2, or (at your option) any later version — see LICENSE. Use it, study it, change it, share it.
Commercial licenses are available for organizations that cannot work under copyleft terms; LICENSING.md explains both options. Contributions require signing a CLA, for reasons set out in CONTRIBUTING.md.


