Self-hosted PM: more than a Kanban board, less than Jira

If you search r/selfhosted for project management, you'll notice the same split every time. One camp recommends Kanboard or Planka. Simple boards, minimal footprint, get it running in minutes. The other camp points to Plane or OpenProject. Full-featured, enterprise-grade, but heavy on infrastructure and configuration. Nobody seems to talk about what fits in between.

Self-hosted project management lightweight tools sit between basic Kanban boards and enterprise platforms. They give you multiple views, time tracking, custom fields and team collaboration without requiring PostgreSQL, Redis or 16 GB of RAM. The goal is real project management that runs on modest hardware and stays out of your way.

TL;DR: Kanboard and Planka are great for simple boards but limited when projects grow. Plane and OpenProject cover everything but demand serious infrastructure. Eigenfocus fills the gap: board, list, timeline and grid views, time tracking, custom fields, SSO. Runs on Docker with SQLite.

Why does self-hosted project management lightweight matter?

Self-hosting your project management tool gives you control over your data. That part is straightforward. The harder question is: how much tool do you actually need?

If your projects are simple, a Kanban board works. Drag cards across columns, done. But the moment you need to plan deliverables over time, track hours or add structured metadata to issues, a plain board stops being enough.

On the other end, tools like Plane and OpenProject give you everything. Sprints, backlogs, Gantt charts, permissions matrices, workflow automations. They also need PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, 4-16 GB of RAM and a Docker Compose file with six services. That's a lot of maintenance for a team that just wants to manage projects without losing weekends to database tuning.

The middle ground exists. You just have to know what to look for.

What makes a Kanban board "too simple"?

Kanboard and Planka do their job well. They give you boards with columns, you move cards around. For personal task tracking or a single project with a few people, they work fine.

Here's where they start to fall short:

• One view only. You get a board. No list view for searching and filtering. No timeline for planning across weeks. No grid for cross-referencing two dimensions.
• No time tracking. If you need to know how long things take, you need a separate tool. Now you're managing two apps instead of one.
• No custom fields. You can't add structured data like priority levels, effort estimates or project phases to your issues. Labels help, but they're flat. You can't sort or filter by a numeric value.
• No custom statuses. Columns are fixed. You can't rename your workflow stages to match how your team actually works.
• Limited collaboration. Comments, mentions, assignees across views. Basic boards don't give you the structure a growing team needs.

None of these limitations are bugs. Kanboard and Planka were built for simplicity. The problem is when your project outgrows them and the only alternatives people suggest are enterprise platforms.

What makes Plane or OpenProject "too much"?

Plane and OpenProject are capable tools. They cover sprints, backlogs, wiki pages, permissions, integrations and more. For large organizations or heavily regulated industries, they make sense.

But for a team that just needs solid project management without the ceremony, they bring baggage:

• Infrastructure requirements. Plane needs PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ and S3-compatible storage. Minimum 4 GB RAM, recommended 16 GB. OpenProject needs PostgreSQL with specific extensions and at least 4 GB. These aren't trivial to maintain. For a detailed comparison, see our breakdown of what self-hosted project management actually costs to run.
• Configuration complexity. Both tools expose dozens of settings. Workflow automations, permission schemes, module toggles. The flexibility is real, but the setup time is real too.
• Enterprise concepts you may not need. Sprints, story points, epics, programs, modules. If your workflow is "assign tasks, track progress, log time," these concepts add cognitive overhead without adding value.

The gap between these two camps is where most teams actually live. You need more than columns on a board. You don't need a project management platform that takes a week to configure.

How does self-hosted project management lightweight work in practice?

Let's make this concrete. Say you're running a product development project. You have a team of eight, a mix of designers and engineers. Here's what a typical setup looks like in Eigenfocus.

Board view for daily work. Your board is grouped by status: Backlog, In Progress, In Review, Done. Each card shows the assignee, a priority custom field (color-coded) and an effort estimate. The team opens this view every morning to see what's active. You can learn more about picking the right view in our guide on when to use each project view.

Timeline view for the roadmap. You switch to the timeline and see deliverables laid out over the next six weeks. "API integration" runs March 10-28. "Design system update" runs March 17 through April 4, overlapping intentionally because different people own each. You group by assignee to spot who's overloaded.

Grid view for status meetings. Group columns by status and rows by label (Frontend, Backend, Design). In one glance you see that Backend has five items In Progress and nothing In Review. That's a bottleneck worth discussing.

Time tracking for estimates. After two sprints, you look at time logs. Bug fixes average 2.5 hours. Feature work averages 8 hours. Next time someone asks for an estimate, you have real data instead of guesses.

Custom fields for workflow context. You add a "Phase" dropdown (Discovery, Build, QA, Launch) and a "Story points" number field. These show up on your board cards and grid cells. No admin panel, no global configuration. Fields belong to the project.

All of this runs on a single Docker container with SQLite. Your data is one file on disk. Back it up by copying it. For a deeper look at what that means for data ownership, read about where your project data actually lives and why your project data is a single SQLite file.

Where do Kanboard, Planka, Plane and OpenProject fit?

Here's an honest look at where each tool works well:

	Kanboard	Planka	Plane	OpenProject	Eigenfocus
Best for	Personal tasks	Simple team boards	Full PM platform	Enterprise/regulated	Middle ground
Views	Board only	Board only	Board, list, timeline, spreadsheet	Board, list, Gantt, calendar	Board, list, timeline, grid
Time tracking	Via plugin	No	No	Yes	Yes (built-in)
Custom fields	Via plugin	No	Yes	Yes	Yes (per-project)
Custom statuses	Limited	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Database	SQLite/MySQL/PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL	SQLite
Min RAM	~256 MB	~512 MB	4 GB	2 GB	~512 MB
Docker services	1-2	2+	5+	2-3	1
Source model	Open source	Open source	Open source (AGPL)	Open source (GPL)	Source-available

Kanboard and Planka are lightweight but limited in features. Plane and OpenProject are feature-rich but heavy on infrastructure. Eigenfocus gives you the views, time tracking, custom fields and team features without the multi-service stack.

See how Eigenfocus pricing works.

Is self-hosted project management lightweight enough for a small VPS?

Yes, if you pick the right tool. A $5-10/month VPS with 1 GB of RAM can run Eigenfocus alongside other services. The SQLite database means no separate database server eating memory in the background.

Tools that need PostgreSQL and Redis are a different story. Even at idle, PostgreSQL and Redis together consume 300-500 MB of RAM. Add the application itself and you're at 2-4 GB before anyone opens a browser. That limits you to more expensive VPS plans or dedicated hardware.

If you're already running a home server with Nextcloud, Gitea and a few other services, adding a project management tool that needs 4 GB of dedicated RAM is a hard sell. Adding one that needs 512 MB is reasonable.

What about the cloud option?

Not everyone wants to self-host, and that's fine. Eigenfocus also runs as a cloud service. Same features, same interface. The difference is that someone else handles the Docker container and backups.

This is worth mentioning because many self-hosted tools treat cloud as an afterthought (or the other way around). With Eigenfocus, both deployment options use the same codebase. Your experience doesn't change based on how you choose to run it.

How to evaluate self-hosted project management lightweight tools

If you're shopping for something in this middle ground, here's what to check:

1. Views. Can you see your work as a board, a list, a timeline and a grid? Different views serve different purposes. A board for daily work, a timeline for planning, a grid for cross-referencing.
2. Time tracking. Built-in or not? If it's a separate integration, you'll spend time configuring it and risk losing data if the integration breaks.
3. Custom fields. Can you add your own fields to issues? Per project, not just globally? Do they show up on cards in every view?
4. Infrastructure. How many Docker services does it need? What database? How much RAM? These determine your real hosting cost and maintenance burden.
5. Data portability. What format is your data in? Can you back it up easily? Can you move it to a different server without a migration guide?
6. Source access. Can you read the code? Can you verify what the tool does with your data? Source-available or open source, either way you should be able to inspect what's running on your server.

Does Eigenfocus work as a Kanban tool too?

Yes. If you start with just a board, Eigenfocus works as a Kanban tool. You get custom statuses, labels, assignees, due dates and comments. That's enough for many projects.

The difference is that when you need more, you don't have to migrate to a different tool. Add a timeline view when planning gets complex. Add custom fields when you need structured metadata. Enable time tracking when clients ask how long things took. The tool grows with your project.

For teams exploring the self-hosted deployment path, this means you pick one tool and stick with it. No re-evaluating every six months because you've outgrown your current setup.

Frequently asked questions

What does "self-hosted project management lightweight" mean?

A self-hosted project management lightweight tool runs on your own server with minimal infrastructure. Instead of needing PostgreSQL, Redis and 16 GB of RAM, it uses simpler technology like SQLite and runs in a single Docker container. You get project management features without the operational overhead of enterprise platforms.

Is Eigenfocus open source?

No. Eigenfocus is source-available (public source). The Free edition has its source code publicly available on GitHub. The Essential and Pro editions are proprietary. You can inspect the code, but the license is different from open source licenses like GPL or AGPL.

Can I migrate from Kanboard or Planka to Eigenfocus?

There's no automated migration path. But since both Kanboard and Planka have relatively simple data models (boards, columns, cards), you can recreate your project structure manually. For most teams this takes an hour or two. The bigger gain is having multiple views, time tracking and custom fields available from day one.

How does Eigenfocus compare to Plane for self-hosting?

Plane offers more enterprise features (sprints, backlogs, cycles, modules) but requires PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ and 4-16 GB of RAM. Eigenfocus focuses on core project management (views, time tracking, custom fields, SSO) and runs on Docker with SQLite in about 1 GB of RAM. The trade-off is enterprise workflow features vs. infrastructure simplicity.

Can Eigenfocus handle multiple projects and team members?

Yes. You can create multiple projects, each with their own statuses, views, custom fields and labels. Team members get assigned to issues and can see their work across projects in the My Work view. SSO via Google, GitHub, Microsoft or custom OIDC is available for team authentication.

Pick the tool that matches your actual needs

The self-hosted project management space doesn't have to be a choice between "too simple" and "too much." If your team needs more than a Kanban board but doesn't want to maintain a PostgreSQL cluster, the middle ground is worth exploring.

See pricing and get started

Explore how teams use Eigenfocus for self-hosted deployment or as a Kanban tool that grows with your projects.