What Beeper Self-Hosting Does and Which Account It Uses

Self-hosting with bbctl runs the bridge on your own hardware, but it still connects to your Beeper account, not to an independent Matrix or Synapse homeserver.

What does self-hosting actually do?

Self-hosting lets you run a supported chat-network bridge (official, custom, or third-party) on your Linux or macOS hardware using bbctl. Message processing and encryption happen on your hardware, and you don't need to run a full Matrix homeserver to do it.

TL;DR: Self-hosting runs your bridge on your own hardware, but it still requires and connects to a Beeper account. There's no supported way to log in with an independent Matrix/Synapse account instead.

Do I still need a Beeper account?

Yes. The bridge connects back to your Beeper account so its chats show up in Beeper; that's why bbctl login asks you to sign in to Beeper.

Can I log in with my own Matrix/Synapse account instead?

No. The documented workflow requires an active Beeper account and doesn't support replacing it with an independently hosted Matrix/Synapse account. Note: you can still message users and rooms on other Matrix servers via federation from your Beeper Matrix identity, that's separate from logging bbctl or the Beeper app into another homeserver.

What kind of support is available?

Self-hosted bridges get limited official support. For community help, join #self-hosting:beeper.com.