Questions, answered.

Ballastra is a community platform for builders. People join communities called Nexuses, which contain Spaces — topic channels for text or voice. Direct messaging, group chats, voice rooms, roles, permissions and moderation are all part of the same product, so a community lives in one place instead of across several apps. It runs on the web today and is in public preview.

Signup needs only a username, an email and a password. There is no government ID check, no facial scan and no age-estimation prompt. You immediately get a profile you can use across every community you join.

A public Nexus is findable in Discover, making the community discoverable by interest rather than invite-only. A private Nexus joins through invite links the owner controls. Public or private is a per-Nexus choice you can change as the community matures.

A Nexus is a community on Ballastra — the top-level space people join. Each one has its own members, roles, categories and Spaces, so a Nexus for a side project looks nothing like a Nexus for a study group. Owners decide whether it is public (findable in Discover) or private (invite-only).

A Space is a channel inside a Nexus, used for either text or voice and video. Spaces are grouped into categories so related conversation stays together, and permissions can be overridden per Space. Text Spaces carry threaded discussion; voice Spaces add talking, video and screen sharing.

A server is a technical container; a community is people and structure. Ballastra calls its container a Nexus and leads with structure: categories and roles come first, and Spaces live inside them. The practical difference is that a Nexus stays navigable as it grows, instead of becoming a wall of channels.

Build categories first, then put the Spaces that belong in them; add a per-Space permission override when a category or community needs to be restricted. Structure-first is why a Nexus stays navigable as it grows — the same design applies whether the community has twenty members or two hundred.

Direct messages, group chats and Space conversations all support replies, reactions, mentions, media and file attachments, polls, editing and pinned messages. Threads keep longer discussions attached to the message that started them. The messaging page shows it in action.

1:1 direct messages can be end-to-end encrypted when either participant turns it on; from then on Ballastra stores only ciphertext for that conversation’s text. Group chats, Space messages, media and calls are not end-to-end encrypted, and Ballastra systems can read that content for moderation, reporting and search. All traffic is encrypted in transit, and message bodies are encrypted at rest. The [security page](/security#encryption) has the details.

Yes. Voice Spaces are rooms inside a Nexus where members talk in real time, and video and screen sharing work in the same Space. Runs in the browser over HTTPS — no client to install. A floating call bar keeps the conversation visible while you keep using the community.

No. Voice and video Spaces run in the browser; the browser asks for microphone or camera permission the first time you join. There is no desktop client and no separate account for calls.

Yes. Screen sharing is available inside a voice Space, so walking someone through a design or a bug does not require a separate call app.

An Aero is a bot built on Ballastra. Developers create Aeros in the developer portal and install them into a Nexus, where they receive a managed role so the ordinary permission system applies to them unchanged. An Aero can never hold the permissions that manage the Nexus, its roles or its Aeros.

Start in the developer portal to create an Aero, then install it into a Nexus — it gets a managed role automatically, so existing permissions apply to it. You run the Aero’s code yourself; it connects to the Aero gateway for real-time events and acts through the Aero REST API, limited to what its role allows. Event delivery is best-effort today, so build Aeros to tolerate a missed event.

Roles carry a set of permissions and are assigned to members. Permissions can be overridden per category and per Space, so a role can be broad in one part of a Nexus and narrow in another. Owners shape the Nexus; moderators operate within what their role allows. The roles and moderation page walks through the model in detail.

Ballastra provides mute, remove and ban, with each moderation action recorded in a log so a team can review what happened and who did it. Member management shows who is in the community and what they are up to. The same tools apply to Aeros because automation is bounded by the ordinary permission system.

Ballastra provides blocking, reporting, role-based moderation and an audit trail, plus a published child-safety policy and community guidelines. Signup requires no ID or biometrics; safety is enforced with moderation, reporting and published policy rather than surveillance. The dedicated safety page details the tools.

Signup collects a username, an email and a password; traffic is encrypted in transit with HTTPS/TLS, and 1:1 direct messages can optionally be end-to-end encrypted — once a participant turns it on, message text is encrypted on the sender's device and Ballastra stores only ciphertext. Group and Space messages, media and calls are not end-to-end encrypted; content in those channels is readable by Ballastra systems so moderation, reporting and search can work, and the privacy policy states exactly what is stored and why. Presence is controllable, including an appear-offline mode.

No. Ballastra is a hosted platform — Nexuses run on Ballastra infrastructure and are accessed through the web app. There is no self-hosted edition at this time. If self-hosting is a hard requirement, it is worth evaluating self-hostable options separately; the Nexus and other product pages describe what Ballastra is, and it is not that.

Migrating usually means: create a Nexus, design its categories and Spaces the way the community actually works, move any pinned announcements or links through the migration Space, and invite members with a link. Because a Nexus is separately public or private, you can build it out before inviting anyone. There is no automated importer yet, so content that needs keeping is moved manually. The step-by-step migration guide walks through the full move, phase by phase.

Yes. Nothing about Ballastra requires leaving another tool. Many communities run a public Nexus alongside whatever members already use — for announcements, voice rooms or member-only Spaces — and keep the old app for whatever still lives there. Splitting is rarely permanent; the goal is to give the community a place that works better, not to force a cutoff.

For a developer or maker community, the qualities that matter are structure you can design, voice that is part of the community rather than an add-on, roles and permissions that scale, and signup that does not require an ID. Ballastra covers those: Nexuses with categories and Spaces, in-browser voice and video rooms, granular roles, and username + email + password signup. The Nexus page works through the structure, and control goes deeper on roles and permissions.

It shares the familiar community-app shape (communities with channels) but is aimed at builders and structured differently: Nexuses lead with categories and roles, Spaces hold text or voice, and there is no ID verification or age-estimation prompt to join. If you are weighing it up, the Nexus and Spaces pages cover what Ballastra actually is.

Ballastra runs on the web today. An Android app is in public preview, distributed as a direct APK download. There is no iOS app yet — statements implying one exists are inaccurate.

Core use is free, and joining is a username, an email and a password — no ID verification. It shares the familiar shape (communities with channels) but uses its own vocabulary: Nexuses contain Spaces, and voice is a first-class part of them. See the migration guide for the practical path if you already run a community elsewhere and are weighing a move.

No. Ballastra is not ad-supported — there is no advertising in the product. Core use is free, with the optional Aether subscription and the paid Beacon visibility feature as the revenue model.