The driving force of Couchers is the global volunteer team, and they are the stars of the show.

That said, Couchers is an open-source project and we are very heavy users of open-source technologies ourselves. We want to give a huge shout out to the folks who have built the tools and technologies that make Couchers possible! We are also supported by some great companies that help us build and operate Couchers, whether it is because we are a non-profit or an open-source project.

Open Source Technologies

We'd like to thank the amazing folks who built these core technologies, without which Couchers couldn't exist:

• The PostgreSQL open-source database project: this incredible project provides the backbone to Couchers!
• The Python language: old & gold!
• The React Ecosystem that powers our web platform
• The Protocol Buffers and gRPC open-source projects
• The PostGIS geospatial extension to Postgres
• The MapLibre and Protomaps projects that have given everyone the power to have pretty maps!
• The SQLAlchemy, GeoAlchemy 2, and Psycopg projects
• The Material UI project ensures our website looks great.
• The Ubuntu and Mansalva open-source fonts
• The Weblate open-source project that allows us to easily translate the site
• The Prometheus/Victoriametrics/Grafana monitoring stack
• The Wiki.js project that powers our wiki
• The Chatwoot open source support platform project that powers all our Support systems
• The Listmonk self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager we use for our newsletters

Company Sponsorships

We are grateful to the following companies that generously provide us with free services, whether specifically due to our non-profit/open-source nature or as part of their general support:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Couchers operates entirely in the cloud, with hosting costs partially offset by the generous non-profit credit program by AWS!
• GitHub hosts all our code and is where we build Couchers (come help out by the way)
• GitLab sponsors us a very generous CI/CD allowance, allowing us to ship better software quicker!
• Google sponsors us free email & drive
• Sentry sponsors a Sentry for Good plan that helps us identify and track bugs
• Monday sponsors us a plan that helps us organize our recruiting processes
• Stripe gives us a discount on processing fees
• Maxmind gives us access to free GeoIP data
• Slack sponsors our Slack workspace with a free Pro Plan where core volunteers collaborate
• Zulip sponsors our Zulip workspace with a free Standard Plan where Community Builders collaborate

Past Company Sponsorships

Previously, we enjoyed generous sponsorship from Vercel and took advantage of Mapbox's free plan, as they are the original creators of several essential open-source mapping technologies that we depend on.