SimpleDMS is an easy-to-use open source document management system (DMS) for small businesses that sorts documents almost by itself.
The metadata-driven concept of SimpleDMS enables efficient filing and fast retrieval of documents after a short familiarization period.
The core of the concept consists of:
- a well thought-out tag system for categorizing documents, and
- workspaces (spaces) for shared or private access to documents.
The app is also available as a SaaS offering at simpledms.eu and simpledms.ch.
Dark mode is, of course, available too.
You can find the technical documentation, the setup reference, and a step-by-step setup guide on the SimpleDMS website.
This app has no analytics or tracking integrated. Therefore, I have no way of knowing how it is used or if it is useful to you. If you have any feedback, please let me know. I would highly appreciate it. Open an issue or discussion on GitHub or email me at email@marcobeierer.ch.
The SimpleDMS app in this repository contains all features relevant for the use by a single company or family.
The goal is to keep all features, including future features, available for free. However, it cannot be guaranteed that all future features are included in the free open source version, as the development of SimpleDMS has to be sustainable in the long term.
To prevent making competing the SimpleDMS SaaS offering (simpledms.eu / simpledms.ch) too easy, a control plane to manage multi-tenant setups (customer management, billing integration, per customer storage limits, maybe white-labeling in the future, etc.) is locked behind a paywall. The code in the paywalled repo is source-available and modification is allowed.
In addition to the SaaS offering, there is a business offering to get the source code under a non-copyleft license.
On demand, paid access to a SimpleDMS version with long-term support (LTS) and support plans can be offered.
You can find the prices on the SimpleDMS website.
SimpleDMS is built with:
- Go
- ent Entity Framework
- SQLite
- htmx with Go templates
- Tailwind CSS
Playwright E2E tests and environment variable documentation are in e2e/README.md.
Go tests on the action layer are implemented in the server package.
A command reference for tests and benchmarks is available in README_TESTS_AND_BENCHMARKS.md.
In the beginning SimpleDMS was developed in a monorepo together with other apps as a closed source project.
When open-sourcing SimpleDMS in December 2025, I decided to remove the git history, because preserving it while extracting the project from the monorepo was not worth the effort. In addition, I didn't want to risk exposing any personal notes or details of my other projects.
You can find the license for SimpleDMS in the file LICENSE_WITH_ADDITIONAL_TERMS.md in this repo.
The verbatim copy of the AGPL v3 can be found in the file COPYING.md.