OnboardoraSelf-Hosted Employee Onboarding: Checklists, Owners, Derived Dates
Self-hosted employee onboarding: write a checklist once and every new starter gets their own plan, with every date worked out from the day they actually start.
No sign-up, no password — the demo opens already signed in, on sample data.
- Full PHP source included
- Instant download + licence key
- It never phones home
- Compare vs SaaS pricing →
The problem it solves
Onboarding fails quietly. The laptop was not ordered, the manager did not know they were the one to book the induction, and nobody noticed until day one — when the new person is sitting in reception.
The fix is not a bigger HR system. It is one timeline per starter, with an owner on every line and dates that move when the start date moves.
- A checklist copied from the last hire, with the last hire's dates still in it
- Tasks owned by "HR" or "the manager" rather than a person who can be asked
- A per-employee-per-month HRIS bought for the one month of the year it matters
What you get
Before they arrive, day one, first week, first month, ninety days. A template written once becomes a plan per starter, and the plan is the screen you work from.
A task carries an offset — seven days before, day one, plus thirty — and the date comes from the start date. Move the start date and the whole plan moves with it. Nothing to go stale.
Not done, and the derived date has passed. There is no is_late column that a missed cron could leave lying on a screen.
Reassigning is inline: pick a name from the row. A task owned by nobody is the one that does not happen, so ownership is a person rather than a department.
Every tick and every reassign is a real form post; the script only makes it quicker. It works on the phone of a manager standing in a warehouse.
What was given out, when, and whether it came back. Not an asset register — the equipment a starter is handed, tracked through the one loop that matters.
The 3.1 wave gave the catalogue a way to reach the other side of the transaction: counterparty email through your own SMTP server, calendar feeds your own calendar subscribes to, attachments filed where the paperwork belongs, and export presets other people's software imports. Every outbound path ships switched off, runs on your own credentials, and can never break the thing that triggered it. This app gained no new outbound path in 3.1 — its pass rewrote the honest-limitations list against the shipped code instead, which is the more useful change when the product was already complete.
See it running — right now, on sample data
No sign-up, no password — it opens already signed in, and resets itself. Click around freely.
Open the live demoIs Onboardora right for you?
Before the price, not after it: what Onboardora deliberately does not do. We publish this on every product because the wrong purchase costs you more than the price.
- Not an HR system of record — no payroll, no salaries, no contracts of employment, no holiday tracking
- No right-to-work or background-check verification — you can tick that the check happened, it does not perform it
- No payroll/HRIS connector — REST API, signed webhooks and MCP are there; wiring them is yours
- No offboarding — equipment tracks issue and return, but there is no leaver flow
- No employee self-service login — tasks owned by the starter are chased by email
- Single-tenant: one company per installation
- Not legal advice — what belongs on a checklist where you operate, and how long you keep the record, are your decisions
Still the right fit? See the price → · Not sure — see who should stay with the SaaS →
Pricing — one-time, yours forever
- ✔ Full source included — PHP you can read and change
- ✔ No subscription. One payment, yours forever
- ✔ It never phones home
- ✔ Your data stays on your server
- ✔ 14-day refunds — we’d rather refund than argue
- ✔ Offline test suite in the box — run it before you rely on it
- ✔ If we ever stop: after 1 year the domain limit lifts, after 3 years your copy relicenses to MIT — it’s in the licence
Not ready to own it? Ownware Cloud runs selected apps from $12/month — and after 12 paid months the perpetual self-host licence is yours.
AlternativeTo 
SaaSHub 
Uneed 
SourceForge Read before you buy — what the zip looks like inside
onboardora/
README.md · QUICKSTART.txt · LICENSE.txt
app/
index.php · router.php · config.sample.php · Dockerfile
src/ the classes — plain PHP 8, no framework, no Composer
controllers/ every route handler
views/ every screen
tests/ the offline test suite — run it yourself: php tests/run.php
bin/ packaging · seeding · maintenance scripts
API.md the REST + webhook + MCP reference
Nothing is obfuscated or encoded. What you read is what runs.
What the same job costs rented
Every figure is read from the vendor’s own pricing page and carries the date it was read.
Core $10 USD per employee/month; Pro $17; Elite $25. Companies of 25 or fewer are a flat rate starting at $250 USD/mo
1 month of BambooHR equals the one-time $69.00.
Source, read 2026-08-22 →The full table — every competitor, what each does better than us, and who should stay with them: Onboardora vs renting →
Which licence do I need?
It comes down to how many installations you need. Running your own business on one site is the Single licence. Building or running sites for other people — a second domain of your own, or an installation a client keeps — is the Extended licence.
Single licence
One (1) domain or subdomain
One business, running it on one site.
- Install it on one domain or subdomain you own or operate
- Change the source however you like for that installation
- Run your own business on it commercially, client work included
- Re-download the current build any time from your buyer portal
- A second site, or an installation you hand to a client as theirs, needs the Extended licence
- No reselling, redistributing or sublicensing the source
- Not for offering it to other people as a hosted service
Extended licence
Unlimited sites you own or operate
Agencies, and anyone running it on more than one site.
- Everything the Single licence grants
- Install it on as many domains as you own or operate — no cap on the number
- Build and hand over one installation per client project
- Still no reselling or redistributing the source itself
- Running it as a multi-tenant service others sign up for needs a SaaS agreement
Every download carries the full terms as LICENSE.txt, and the licence you bought is
named on your order and in your buyer portal. The complete wording lives on the
terms page, and the live demo is free for as long
as it takes to decide.
No reviews yet — so here is what we offer instead. Every competitor price on our comparison pages is source-linked and dated, and when a vendor’s price won’t load we say so rather than guess. See the sources for yourself →
After you buy
The four things people ask right before they decide.
Your download link always serves the current build at the time you fetch it — re-download any time from your order page or the buyer portal. No renewal fee to keep what you bought.
Email support for installation and for defects in the code as delivered — a person answers, usually within a day or two. It does not cover custom development or server administration. What support covers →
Refunds are handled by Lemon Squeezy as Merchant of Record, case by case — if something is broken and we can’t fix it, we’d rather refund than argue. EU consumers additionally hold the statutory 14-day right until delivery starts. Refund terms →
Nothing stops. You hold the full PHP source, it runs on your own server, and the software does not phone home — there is no licence check that can fail and no cloud that can be switched off. LICENSE.txt ships inside the zip, so your right to keep running it never depended on this site existing.
Covered in these guides
Every onboarding checklist starts as a copy of the last one, with the last hire's dates still in it. The fix is not a bigger HR system: it is storing an offset instead of a date, so moving a start date moves the whole plan and "late" is computed rather than remembered.
Questions about Onboardora
Is this an HR system?
No. No payroll, no salaries, no contracts of employment, no holiday tracking. It is the first ninety days as one timeline, and it says so — the HR system of record is a different purchase.
Does it do right-to-work or background checks?
No verification of either. You can put right-to-work check on a checklist and tick it; the check itself happens wherever it happens today.
Can the new starter log in and tick their own tasks?
No. There is no employee self-service login. Tasks owned by the starter are chased by email and ticked by whoever owns the plan.
Does it handle people leaving?
No offboarding. Equipment tracks issue and return, which covers the common case, but there is no leaver flow.
Will it connect to my HR system?
There is a REST API, signed webhooks and an MCP endpoint. Wiring them to a specific HRIS is your integration — there is no prebuilt connector.