Openfire

Is Openfire actively maintained?

Openfire is under active development: 918 commits landed over the last 11 months, averaging roughly 119 commits a month in the most recent quarter.

The most recent tagged release, v5.1.2, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.

Among the 6 communication - xmpp - servers projects we track, Openfire currently has the highest health score.

What Openfire actually does

Openfire is a real-time collaboration server that facilitates instant messaging and chat infrastructure. Built on Java and distributed under the Apache-2.0 licence, it handles client connections for XMPP-based communication networks. It provides a centralised backend for managing users, routing messages, and administering chat services across an organisation.

Best fit: It is a solid fit if you need to run an internal, self-hosted XMPP messaging network behind your own firewall.

Worth knowing: Managing a Java-based enterprise server can introduce significant operational overhead regarding memory tuning, security updates, and configuration management compared to lighter alternatives.

Deployment notes

Because it runs on Java, you will typically need to provision a compatible runtime environment, configure persistent storage for chat logs and user data, and set up a reverse proxy to handle TLS termination.

Links

• Official website
• Source code