Sandstorm
by Sandstorm · Open source platform for self-hosting web apps
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Sandstorm
Homepage
Overview
Sandstorm is an open source platform for self-hosting web apps, including Etherpad for documents, Davros for files, Wekan for tasks and Rocket.Chat for chat. Apps are installed from an App Market in a few clicks and update automatically. Each thing you create — a document, chat room or mailbox — is a 'grain' held in its own container, private until you share it.
- Best for
- Individuals and teams who want to self-host open source web apps with per-document access control
- Pricing
- The captured page shows no prices; Sandstorm is described as an open source, self-hosted project with a donate link.
- Runs on
- LinuxSelf-hosted
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Each document runs in its own sandboxed container, private by default
- App Market installs in a few clicks, with automatic updates
- One access-control system across all apps; access can be revoked
- Run it on your own machines or hosted, and move between them
Trade-offs
- You run and administer the server yourself
- Limited to apps packaged for Sandstorm's App Market
- Built by a volunteer community; no support terms stated
- The '95% of vulnerabilities mitigated' figure is the project's own claim
How Sandstorm markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Sandstorm’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Sandstorm is an open source platform for self-hosting web apps”
- Angle: Open source / ownership
- Hero: Illustration
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Sandstorm’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Sandstorm pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
Claim Sandstorm to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.