Sandstorm
Sandstorm is an open source self-hostable web productivity platform using fine-grained object containerization ('grains') and capability-based security to sandbox individual documents and apps. Founded 2014 as a venture-backed startup, it failed commercially, was dissolved circa 2022, and now operates as a volunteer-maintained community project under Open Source Collective.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2014
- HeadquartersPalo Alto, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Sandstorm does
Sandstorm is an open source platform for self-hosting web applications, founded circa 2014 as Sandstorm Development Group, Inc. by Kenton Varda (Technical Architect, author of Cap'n Proto, formerly of Google Protocol Buffers) and Jade Wang (Community Manager, formerly Chief Culture Officer at Meteor). The platform's defining technical innovation is fine-grained object containerization: instead of isolating entire services in containers as Docker does, Sandstorm isolates each individual document, chat room, mailbox, or notebook as a separate 'grain' in its own Linux-kernel sandbox using namespaces, cgroups, and seccomp filters. Access between grains is mediated by the Powerbox UI, which implements capability-based security via Cap'n Proto object capabilities. The platform includes an App Market with 95+ packaged apps (Rocket.Chat, Wekan, Etherpad, Davros, etc.), unified access control across all apps, single sign-on, and automatic cryptographically signed updates. Free dynamic DNS and TLS are provided via Sandcats.io.
The original business model combined a free open source core with two paid overlays: Sandstorm Oasis managed hosting (subscription tiers) and Sandstorm for Work enterprise features (LDAP/SAML, organizational policies) at $15/user/month. The company raised $58,929 via Indiegogo crowdfunding in August 2014 and a $1.3M seed round in January 2015 led by Quest Venture Partners, expanding to 7 employees. Despite a strong technical product and developer mindshare, Sandstorm failed to close a Series A in 2016; enterprise sales produced only two deals totaling four-figure revenue. The paywall was removed in February 2017, the Blackrock cluster backend was open-sourced, and most of the team (including both co-founders) joined Cloudflare in March 2017. Oasis was shut down December 31, 2019, and the corporate entity was dissolved circa 2022 with IP transferred to the Sandstorm Community under Open Source Collective.
As of 2024, the project is community-maintained by volunteers led by Jacob Weisz (ocdtrekkie) at sandstorm.org, with no commercial revenue and operations funded solely by donations via Open Collective. The target user base spans privacy-conscious individuals, self-hosting enthusiasts, small and medium businesses, independent app developers, and education-sector institutions (notably the BC Open Educational Technology Collaborative). The platform continues to be downloaded and self-installed by thousands of users globally, but there is no headcount, no funding cadence, and no active commercial go-to-market.
Sandstorm firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Sandstorm
- Legal name
- Sandstorm Development Group, Inc.
- Website
- https://sandstorm.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2014
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Sandstorm is an open source self-hostable web productivity platform using fine-grained object containerization ('grains') and capability-based security to sandbox individual documents and apps. Founded 2014 as a venture-backed startup, it failed commercially, was dissolved circa 2022, and now operates as a volunteer-maintained community project under Open Source Collective.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Sandstorm industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Open Source Self-Hosting Platform
- NAICS
- Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (519290)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Container Platforms & Orchestration (Kubernetes) (HDABADAF)
Keywords
Where Sandstorm is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Palo Alto
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Sandstorm business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- VC Funding (Historical): Sandstorm Development Group raised $1.3M in seed funding in January 2015 from Quest Venture Partners and angel investors. The company crowdfunded $58,929 via Indiegogo in August 2014. The company failed as a business by end of 2016 and was dissolved. The remaining IP was transferred to Open Source Collective.
- Sandstorm Oasis Managed Hosting (Discontinued): Sandstorm operated a managed hosting service called Oasis that charged subscription fees for hosted Sandstorm instances. The service earned approximately $1,800/month revenue but was costing ~$1,400/month in infrastructure and fees. The service was shut down on December 31, 2019.
- Sandstorm for Work Feature Keys (Discontinued): Enterprise features including LDAP/SAML integration, organizational access control policies were behind a paywall requiring purchase of 'feature keys' at $15/user/month. This product never achieved significant revenue despite hundreds of trials. The paywall was removed in February 2017 when the company returned to community roots.
- Community Donations (Current): The current community project accepts donations through Open Collective (opencollective.com/sandstormcommunity) and participated in FundOSS matching program. No commercial revenue generation.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Others | Open Source - Free |
| One time/ perpetual license | Others | Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign Perks (Historical) |
| Subscription | Monthly | Sandstorm for Work Enterprise Features (Discontinued) |
| Subscription | Monthly | Oasis Managed Hosting (Discontinued) |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels8 records
Sandstorm product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Sandstorm is a free, open source (Apache 2.0) platform that lets users self-host web applications on their own Linux servers with one-click installation from an App Market of 95+ productivity apps. It isolates each document, chat room, or app instance as a separate "grain" in its own kernel-level sandbox, applies capability-based security via the Powerbox UI, and provides platform-level unified access control and automatic updates with cryptographic verification.
Product overview
Sandstorm is an open source platform for self-hosting web applications, featuring fine-grained object containers called 'grains' where each document, chat room, or app instance runs in its own secure sandbox. The platform includes an App Market with 95+ productivity apps (Rocket.Chat, Davros, Wekan, Etherpad), built-in capability-based security via Powerbox, and supporting services like Sandcats.io for dynamic DNS. The platform offers single sign-on, unified sharing access control, automatic updates, and claims to mitigate 95% of app security vulnerabilities automatically.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Grains: Fine-grained object containers that Sandstorm uses to isolate each document, chat room, or other data unit in its own secure sandbox.
- Powerbox
- Sandcats
Products and services
- Sandstorm Platform Open source (Apache 2.0) platform for self-hosting web applications on user-controlled Linux servers, providing one-click app installation, per-grain sandboxing, capability-based security via Powerbox, unified access control, and automatic cryptographic-verified updates.
- Sandstorm App Market Directory and installation channel at apps.sandstorm.io that lists 95+ open source, Sandstorm-packaged apps (Etherpad, Wekan, Rocket.Chat, Davros, etc.) with demos, screenshots, and ratings; apps are installed directly into the user's own Sandstorm instance with one click.
- Sandcats.io Free dynamic DNS and automatic TLS certificate provisioning service for self-hosted Sandstorm servers, simplifying secure setup by removing the need for users to obtain and renew certificates themselves.
- vagrant-spk Open source developer tool for packaging web applications into Sandstorm "spk" packages inside a reproducible Vagrant virtual environment, with default configuration stacks for common frameworks.
- Blackrock Open source alternate backend for Sandstorm capable of scaling out across a cluster of machines; originally used internally to power the Oasis managed hosting service before being released under open source in February 2017.
Quantifiable outcome
- 95% of security vulnerabilities in apps automatically mitigated before discovery
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Sandstorm
Customer profileNamed customers3 records
Segments6 records
Ideal customer profiles5 records
Sandstorm technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration1 record
Feature7 records
Sandstorm partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Three partnerships are on record, tiered major and minor.
- Open Source CollectivemajorOpen Source Collective serves as Sandstorm's fiscal host and non-profit entity. The project was transferred to the Sandstorm Community under Open Source Collective in January 2024. Open Source Collective provides 501(c)(6) status, financial administration, and fundraising infrastructure.
- FundOSSminorSandstorm participated in FundOSS, a donation matching program joint effort between Open Source Collective and GitCoin with democratic funding model for allocating matching funds.
- BC Open Educational Technology CollaborativeminorCollaborative of British Columbia higher education institutions using Sandstorm to provide open source productivity tools. Cited as a reference customer for educational use cases.
Scale indicators8 records
Recent moves7 records
Expansion highlights4 records
Sandstorm competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Cloudron: Cloudron is a directly comparable self-hosting platform that packages web apps (Nextcloud, WordPress, Rocket.Chat, etc.) into one-click installable apps on a managed Linux server. Sandstorm and Cloudron target the same 'easy self-hosting' niche with an app-market model, but differ in their containerization model (Cloudron uses Docker, Sandstorm uses fine-grained grains).
- YunoHost: YunoHost is an open source self-hosting server operating system that lets users run apps (email, websites, chat, etc.) on their own hardware. It overlaps with Sandstorm's value proposition of making self-hosted productivity apps accessible to non-technical users, with a comparable app catalog and packaging system.
- Cozy Cloud: Cozy Cloud builds a personal cloud platform for self-hosting user data, with an app ecosystem for productivity tools. It is comparable to Sandstorm in targeting privacy-conscious individuals and small organizations who want to own their data rather than rely on consumer SaaS.
- CapRover: CapRover is an open source self-hosting PaaS/Docker Swarm manager that enables one-click app deployment to a personal server. It targets the same self-hoster audience as Sandstorm but takes a Docker-based approach rather than Sandstorm's custom fine-grained containerization.
- Umbrel: Umbrel is an open source platform for self-hosting apps and services on personal servers, originally focused on Bitcoin/Lightning nodes but now expanding into productivity and home-server apps. It shares Sandstorm's positioning of making self-hosting as easy as installing apps on a phone.
Emerging players
- Coolify: Coolify is an emerging open source, self-hostable Heroku/Netlify alternative that runs on user infrastructure. It is comparable to Sandstorm as a newer entrant into the self-hosted app platform category, though Coolify uses standard Docker containers rather than Sandstorm's grain model.
- CasaOS: CasaOS is an open source home cloud operating system that provides a simple UI for managing self-hosted apps via Docker. It targets a comparable self-hosting enthusiast user base but emphasizes a home/media-server use case rather than Sandstorm's security-first productivity focus.
Broad incumbents
- Nextcloud: Nextcloud is the largest self-hosted productivity/file-sync platform and a key alternative to the Sandstorm + Davros combination. While Sandstorm is a multi-app platform, Nextcloud operates broadly in the same self-hosted productivity ecosystem with an established commercial company backing it.
- TrueNAS: TrueNAS (iXsystems) is an established open source storage/server OS platform that enables running apps and services on dedicated hardware. While oriented toward storage and NAS use cases, it is comparable to Sandstorm as an open source self-hosting infrastructure layer, though at much larger scale.
- Synology (DiskStation Manager): Synology's DSM provides one-click app installation, sandboxing, and self-hosting for home and small business users on NAS hardware. It is comparable to Sandstorm in delivering app-store-style installation of self-hosted services with security controls, but at a much larger scale and via proprietary hardware.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Sandstorm social profiles
Digital presenceSandstorm financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Sandstorm leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Sandstorm funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors2 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Sandstorm M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments1 record
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Sandstorm
What does Sandstorm do?
Sandstorm is a free, open source (Apache 2.0) platform that lets users self-host web applications on their own Linux servers with one-click installation from an App Market of 95+ productivity apps. It isolates each document, chat room, or app instance as a separate "grain" in its own kernel-level sandbox, applies capability-based security via the Powerbox UI, and provides platform-level unified access control and automatic updates with cryptographic verification.
Is Sandstorm a public or private company?
Sandstorm is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Sandstorm founded?
Sandstorm was founded in 2014. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Sandstorm based?
Sandstorm is headquartered in Palo Alto, United States, in the North America region.
How does Sandstorm make money?
Four revenue lines are on record. VC Funding (Historical) is the primary driver. The others are sandstorm Oasis Managed Hosting (Discontinued), sandstorm for Work Feature Keys (Discontinued) and community Donations (Current).
Who are Sandstorm's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Cloudron, YunoHost, Cozy Cloud, CapRover and Umbrel. Emerging players are Coolify and CasaOS. Broad incumbents are Nextcloud, TrueNAS and Synology (DiskStation Manager).
Does Sandstorm have an API?
No public API is recorded for Sandstorm.
What industry is Sandstorm in?
Sandstorm's product category is Open Source Self-Hosting Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDABADAF, Container Platforms & Orchestration (Kubernetes). Its NAICS code is 519290 and its SIC code is 7372.