Question: What do people in this community recommend for self-hosted instant messanger projects? I host a VOIP service for my nerd herd and due to recent events i’m attempting to migrate out groups chats off of the major platforms (Discord, Google chats, Slack, Etc.) as well.
There are a few notes that were requested/requirements.
- Self-hosted
- Supports images
- Has a decent mobile app
- Encrypted communication
- Expected load ~25 users.
I am doing my own digging but wanted to hear the communites opinions on some of the projects that came up in searches.
- IRC/XMPP - dosent really work for the request but is a classic, so I feel had to mention it.
- Rocket.Chat - seems like the best option so far, but I was having trouble finding current reviews, and its licensing is a bit much.
- Matrix also is close to checking all the boxes, but it wasnt clear how it works on mobile (Element seemed like the mobile app that was recommended).
- Revolt was high on the SEO results but most of the discussion around it was about drama with the maintainers (that is what prompted this post, i’m fishing for more current opinions).
- Zulip seemed similar to Rocket.Chat, but more expensive if we had to get a license.
I appreciate peoples opinions and recomendations on this topic.
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I’ve been using a self hosted matrix server for the apst year, no complaints so far and since a lot of technical rooms already exist on other matrix servers, interoperability is a big plus. Also element mobile app is pretty decent but there are plenty of other alternative apps too.
The new Element X app is awesome and it support the new Matrix 2.0. I highly recommend Matrix
Yes, absolutely. Might be a bit difficult to set up, OP if you have any problems you can contact me at @gregor:gregtech.eu and I’ll help out (:
You say XMPP doesn’t work for the request, why not?
@wildbus8979 @Bahnd Yeah, XMPP checks all the boxes. That said, I don’t know how well encrypted group chats (MUC) work with various clients.
Also, while message contents are encrypted, metadata is not. Self-hosting ameliorates that, but if your “self-hosting” involves a VPS or whatever hosted by a giant corporation, then that’s something to be aware of.
My last expirence with XMPP is very dated, my old groups in EvE online used it and it was perfect for its role as a sort of internet pager to summon the horde of nerds. Im aware there are many new related projects, discounting it seems a bit premature now, if you have any recomendations I would love to read their docs.
My concern is that I would have to pitch what ever project we landed on to a semi-technical group of gamers with a handful of admins to run things. (Trying to avoid a platform that gen-z would complain about, and they already roll their eyes at me when I mention spaceships and spreadsheets).
XMPP clients for Android are great, for iOS a bit less so. On Windows / Linux Gajim is probably the best option right now. JoinJabber.org has a good list of up to date clients (do not use Pidgin, it’s horrible and super outdated).
In general the main downside compared to Discord is the lack of voice-channels. 1:1 voice or video calls work great with the Android clients and group calls are partially supported in some desktop clients (that is currently very active field of development for XMPP clients).
Snikket seems to be it for iOS. But it does work pretty well, I haven’t run into any issues with it.
For Windows well, nothing does voice as far as I know.
Voice call implementation in Gajim is only waiting for an upstream improvement, it is already working otherwise. Sadly upstream seems slow in fixing this.
You can try this unofficial Windows version of Dino though, which supports calls: https://github.com/mxlgv/dino
Edit: and there is of course always Movim, which works fine in most browsers and supports 1:1 calls.
Cool, didn’t know about Dino, thanks!
Why wouldn’t XMPP work? It fulfills all your requirements and has nice modern apps, especially for mobile. Definitely better than Matrix.
The easiest to get started with it would be setting up a Snikket server (Prosody based, but pre-configured for small private groups).
I ran an XMPP network based on prosody and used snikket on android. Can recommend!
Look into mattermost. Quite powerful, and free.
It is BUT you are limited to their test servers for mobile notifications and they honestly suck. It’s a coin flip whether you get them. And if you want better you have to set up your own container system like them with firebase and Apple Dev ids.
I like it still but for a Greenfield project I’d probably try matrix 2.0 on synapse with element x as the mobile app.
SimpleX is pretty good for person to person chat I’ve heard it doesn’t handle large groups very well though.
Mattermost is an easily hostable slack-like option.
It’s probably more than you are looking for but if you are already looking at self hosting things connected with NextCloud, use NextCloud Talk. We use it for the family and it is great.
Last time I checked, Nextcloud Talk android app simply refuse to implement any sort of pull system. If one’s using a google-less phone one needs to set up a push system on top (I’ve never managed to get the NC push system to work properly). There’s even a separate “Nextcloud Notification checker” app on F-Droid to remedy the problem. It’s all a bit silly.
The really hilarious thing to me is that the NextPush app (unified push provider that can be run on your nextcloud server) is unsupported by nextcloud talk. But it is supported by a bunch of other competing applications.
You could look into prose. The interface of slack/discord/mattermost, built on XMPP, with E2EE.
Is that the same as prosody.im ?
That’s the one I’ve been looking at. It seems to be easy, but I haven’t had time to look into it fully.
It’s more comparable to Snikket. Both Snikket and Prose use Prosody as server with their own extensions.
for matrix check out element X, which is X is the modernized version for matrix 2 protocol
they have a server side software you can selfhost too
Matrix works great. Element X is my favourite client.
+1 for matrix. Also check out schlidichat which is a nice client for matrix forked from Element
Its very fun getting a turtle notification too.
This… This is half of it haha
That’s what I ended up doing for my group that wanted off Discord for privacy reasons. Mobile works fine and I’m also using Schildichat, though I think most of my group is using Element.
How’s your experience been?
I haven’t really had any problems with it. We’ve been using it regularly for text, but mostly for voice chat during games. It’s a lot to set up, but I’m using someone’s ansible setup so I just run a few commands and it does its thing and updates in the background.
I host Rocket.Chat for my wife’s business. The free self-hosted version now allows up to 50 users before having to purchase a license (was 25 prior to the version 7 update). If you kick a user you simply deactivate their account and regain the user slot. Rather than deleting a user completely which would additionally delete any messages they’ve posted.
Easy to host, easy to upgrade. Mobile apps both IOS and Android work well.
I wanted to use Zulip as I felt the interface was cleaner. But the 10 user limit was a deal breaker.
Matrix also is close to checking all the boxes, but it wasnt clear how it works on mobile (Element seemed like the mobile app that was recommended).
I run Matrix, and it’s pretty great. Though I would recommend Schildichat over Element for the mobile app. I had all kinds of issues with Element Mobile somehow screwing up the E2EE keys for my other sessions. Nothing seemed to fix it except removing my account from it completely. Switched to Schildichat and haven’t had that issue since.
Seconded with Matrix. All I’m wanting for it is for someone to make a Discord/Revolt UI frontend for Matrix 2.0 and it’ll be a drop in replacement
I would recommend Matrix, tried all others, too. A bonus idea you could take a look at: https://github.com/balzack/databag
Probably Matrix
I deployed RocketChat on two different client installations (didn’t check the licensing you’re mentioning, I’ll have to look into that) and I run a Prosody instance (XMPP) on my own; tried Matrix for a short while and ran away from that mess as fast as I could. anyhow, although the messengers work without any significant issues or downtime, the amount of flak I get from non-tech normies about the client apps is staggering.
the apps just aren’t up to current UX standards. they’re used to Twitter and iMessage and Telegram quality UX, and getting used to these PoC-quality apps - both on mobile and desktop - makes them “feel icky”. I’ve had to intervene on a number of occasions when some of them transferred their business-related comms to other platforms because they just can’t/won’t get used to these apps.
I’m not sure if matrix will ever be able to overcome this hurdle
