Waterhole is where communities thrive.

The Laravel-powered discussion platform giving life to vibrant online communities for brands, creators, and teams.

A screenshot of the homepage a Waterhole-powered community called Leaf. On the left is a navigation bar showing the different sections of the community, and on the right a list of discussion topics.

Powerful community building blocks

Everything you need to build and sustain a healthy community is included out of the box, thoughtfully designed to be simple and flexible. Mix and match settings in each channel to optimize incentives and get the best out of your community.

Answers

Mark the best answer for each question in support channels, and filter posts by answered or unanswered.

Reactions

Customize reactions for each channel – keep it simple with "likes", get fancy with some emoji, or use reactions to count votes.

Taxonomies

Define filterable taxonomies for each channel to sub-categorize discussion without overwhelming hierarchies.

User Groups

Reward trusted contributors with flair, and give them access to private channels.

Filters

Customize the filters available for each channel to help users find the most relevant content.

Prompts

Set up just-in-time prompts to guide and nudge users as they submit new content, improving discussion quality.

Moderation Tools

Keep things civil by suspending disruptive users and locking unproductive discussions.

Layouts

Choose how to display posts in each channel – as a list or as expanded cards.

Single Sign-on

Allow users to sign in with any OAuth2 provider like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or your own site.

Search

Fast and precise search out of the box to help users find what they're looking for.

Analytics

Visualize recent activity and trends in your community with customizable dashboard widgets.

Notifications

Follow channels and posts to get notified about new activity, and @mention other users to notify them.

Built for Laravel developers

Waterhole is a highly extensible Laravel package, installable via Composer. Laravel developers will feel right at home creating bespoke designs using Blade components, and adding custom features with Models, Service Providers, and Middleware.

Read the Docs

Take full control of your community

Your community is too important to depend on the whims of a large corporation, or the fortune of a SaaS company. Waterhole is source-available and self-hosted, so you're forever in full control of your server, code, and data.

<?php

use Waterhole\Extend;

class WaterholeServiceProvider extends Extend\ServiceProvider
{
    public function extend(): void
    {
        Extend\Stylesheet::add(
            file: resource_path('css/header.css')
        );

        Extend\LayoutBefore::add(
            content: 'partials.header',
            position: -10
        );
    }
}

A lightning fast experience for your users

Waterhole is built for everyone – including users with slow connections, older hardware, and even JavaScript disabled. It loads in a heartbeat which is great for your users and SEO.

Waterhole

1.0s

11.1s

Measuring time to Largest Contentful Paint on Google Chrome 112, M1 MacBook Air, cache disabled, Fast 3G throttling (560ms of latency, 1.44 Mbps bandwidth). Recorded on 20/4/23.

Ready to jump in?

Start building

Waterhole is free to try out while you're getting things set up on a local development server.

Install Waterhole

Buy a license

Get developer support while you build, and launch your new Waterhole community to the world.

See Pricing