IMO Snikket (XMPP) is the easiest all-in-one solution with audio/video chat at the moment. Pretty good on resources too.
I currently host a Matrix Synapse server, but:
- Matrix seems to be expanding in the corporate / institutional direction, more services are expected for regular functionality
- Element X (upcoming client) breaks calls compatibility with old Element, now requiring Element Call. It’s kind of a mess, I presume this is to support group calls, but makes it a PITA to use currently.
- Even with small number of users, Synapse DB grows in size due to state_groups_state table, non-deletable users, and copying ALL data from other servers’ rooms (this one is by design but still…)






Got PineTime pre-tariffs (even though it took a while to ship to US)
Pretty neat piece of hardware, has everything that I want (notifications, time, weather, timer), InfiniTime OS is open source and was easy to read, build and flash (had to do so to add missing Cyrillic letters and a shortcut)
As long as your expectations are that of a microcontroller-powered device and not a supercomputer-on-your-wrist, it’s fantastic.