Relay Services & apps
Mini PCs
In the meter cupboard or on your desk: the Relay and all your apps on one quiet box.
Apple Mac mini · Topton · Beelink · Minisforum · Intel N100 · AMD Ryzen
Hardware you own · your own domain · no third-party cloud account
Everything connects viaalink
You don't need a third-party cloud account to put something on the internet. A phone, a Raspberry Pi or the laptop in front of you. One Viaalink Relay. Your own domain. That is the whole stack.
Made in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 🇪🇺 · Runs on Linux, macOS, Docker and NAS · Open app registry
How the system works
One Relay, your own domain, and every device behind it.
For people who know what a server is but have never run one. Step through the parts, or send a request and follow it from a visitor to your Raspberry Pi and back.
Where the Relay lives
- AnywhereA visitor types git.kelvin.example
- asks InternetDNS *.kelvin.example → Relay
- 443 Your homeYour router forwards 80 · 443 → Relay
- 443 Your homeViaalink Relay stays on · holds the domain · HTTPS
stays open
- PhoneNotetaker — your meeting notes notes.kelvin.example
- Raspberry PiGitea, your own Git server git.kelvin.example
- Laptopthe project you're building dev.kelvin.example
Press “Send a request” to follow one request from a visitor to your Pi and back.
01 / 06
Your devices
A phone running Notetaker. A Raspberry Pi running Gitea. The laptop you're building on. They sit behind your router, like they always did. None of them has a public address of its own.
Cloud or your own hardware
The cloud rents you a computer. You already have one.
An honest comparison. The cloud is faster to start, and someone else keeps it running. Most other things favour the machine on your desk.
| Cloud platform | Your hardware + a Relay | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | A monthly bill that grows with use and with every user. | The machine once, a domain name, and one Relay license per year. |
| Where your data is | Their datacenter, their region, their terms. | In your room. You can point at it. |
| When you stop paying | Your project goes offline. Export what you can. | The machine and everything on it are still yours. |
| Your address | project.platform.app, until the platform changes. | name.yourdomain, for as long as you hold the domain. |
| What you learn | Their console. | Linux, Docker, DNS, HTTPS. Skills that transfer. |
| Who keeps it running | They do. Outages are theirs to fix. | You do. If the machine is off, the site is off. |
If you never want to think about a machine, use the cloud. If you want to own the thing you built, keep reading.
Two doors
What brings you here?
For people
I want an app that keeps my things on my own phone.
For the machines
I run the hardware and want my own addresses.
What we use
The software we work with every day.
These are the tools behind Viaalink, and why we use them. They are not apps in the catalog: they run next to the via CLI, and commands such as via terminal and via codeserver start connect them through your Viaalink Relay, so you can work on them together.
Docker docker.com Every app in the catalog runs as a container. We test each one in Docker before it gets the Tested label. Caddy caddyserver.com The web server in front of your services. It fetches the HTTPS certificates, so we never do that by hand. code-server github.com/coder/code-server VS Code in the browser. We open it for a colleague through the Relay and work in the same files.
$ via codeserver start ttyd github.com/tsl0922/ttyd A terminal in the browser. We use it to look at one machine together, without handing out SSH keys. $ via terminal mitmproxy mitmproxy.org When something breaks, we look at exactly which requests pass through. TypeScript typescriptlang.org Our Caddy API client and this website are written in it. Go go.dev For command-line tools that should be one small file on every platform. Inspiration
Machines that can do one of two jobs.
Relay
The machine runs your Viaalink Relay: the front door that gives your devices an address on your domain.
Services & apps
The machine runs your websites, services and apps. They reach the world through a Relay, at home or in the cloud.
Relay Services & apps
AI mini computers
Local models next to your own services, reachable through your Relay.
NVIDIA Jetson · AMD Ryzen AI · Apple silicon
Relay Services & apps
NAS with Docker
Your files are already there. Run the Relay and your services in Docker.
ASUSTOR · Synology Plus · QNAP · any NAS that runs Docker
Relay Services & apps
Single-board computers
Small enough for behind the TV: a Relay, or one site that goes online through a Relay.
Raspberry Pi · Orange Pi · Radxa · arm64
Relay Experimental
Phones running Linux
A phone from the drawer, running Linux, as a spare Relay.
postmarketOS · Mobian · arm64
Relay · cloud
Or: one Relay in the cloud, everything else at home.
Put a single Relay on a VPS at a European provider. Your own hardware hosts your websites, services and work.
Why we build this
The web began on a single desktop computer at CERN. The next one can start on yours.
- 01
A cloud bill is rent. Hardware you own is paid for once.
- 02
Your address belongs on your domain, not on someone's platform.
- 03
When a platform changes its prices or rules, your own machine keeps running.
Your first Relay
Four steps, in the order you'll do them.
Start with what is on your desk. A new Relay runs 14 days without a license; after that, Free is one e-mail sign-in away.
- 01
Pick a machine that stays on
A Raspberry Pi, a mini PC, an old laptop, a NAS. amd64, arm64 or armv6.
- 02
Get a domain name
Any registrar. Point it at your home connection, or at your VPS.
- 03
Install the Relay
Linux service, Docker Compose or the NAS app. Your router forwards 80 and 443, or the VPS does it for you.
- 04
Connect a device
via expose 3000on your laptop puts your first project on your domain. Then add the phone, then the Pi.
What it cannot do
Said first, so you can decide.
We would rather you know this before you start than after.
- 01It does not make a Raspberry Pi faster than a datacenter. A busy site needs a bigger machine.
- 02If your machine is off, your site is off. Keeping it on is yours to do.
- 03You still need a domain name, and either a router you can configure or a small VPS.
- 04Free needs an e-mail sign-in on viaalink.com. We use it to see who runs a Relay and to stop abuse, not to mail you.
- 05The Relay is one more program to keep updated. It runs on your machine, so that is your job.
- 06Notetaker runs on Android, macOS and Linux. Windows and iOS are coming.
Projects
What we work on
Blog
Notes from the work.
Videos
caddy Inspect live traffic with Caddy and mitmproxy, no restart Swap one Caddy route through mitmproxy at runtime with @viaalink/caddy-api-client, read the real requests, and put the route back. Nothing restarts.
playwright Your Playwright tests are already a demo @viaalink/playwright-video-merge turns the videos of a Playwright run into one demo reel, each test opening with its name. Version 0.2.0 merges every recording, names every video from the report and keeps your test order.
caddy Read the SQL on the wire with Caddy and mitmproxy Your backend builds SQL from the user's filters. Route the Postgres connection through mitmproxy at runtime with @viaalink/caddy-api-client, read the real query, and put the route back. Nothing restarts.
vscode How we made a promo film that can't lie The film for 0.3.0 of Caddy Configuration Tools for VS Code is a Playwright test: every step is checked against the real extension and a real Caddy, and the narration is the author's own voice, cloned on our own GPU.Articles
- relay From office to apps Our whole office runs on one small server behind our own Viaalink Relay: project management, sign-in, passwords, mail, analytics, a local AI model. How it fits together, why the Relay is the web server, and why we are turning it into via apps.
- caddy Automating Caddy's Admin API from TypeScript @viaalink/caddy-api-client is a typed TypeScript client for Caddy's Admin API. Build routes with type-safe helpers, keep the admin endpoint on localhost, and fail fast on timeouts and bad input.
- relay Viaalink Relay 1.37.0: every screen of the dashboard Viaalink Relay 1.37.0 (ASUSTOR package 0.62.8): your own server on your own domain, with a dashboard for devices, people, domains and licenses. A tour of every screen.
Contact
Talk to a human. Kelvin is one.
Write us a message, or mail info@viaalink.com. A person reads every one.