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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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.
I would recommend Matrix, tried all others, too. A bonus idea you could take a look at: https://github.com/balzack/databag
Probably Matrix
Matrix works great. Element X is my favourite client.
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.
+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.
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.
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
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
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.
We host a small Matrix-server. The server is for 4 people but barely uses the 2 cores 4GB RAM.
Storage is mostly media, but stayed under 100GB in about 3 years.
We also host a web frontend and use Schildichat as app, but Element X could be better nowadays. Both also have a desktop client.
A big plus are all the bridges. My girlfriend uses WhatsApp, no problemo, there is a bridge for that. That one club only has a signal group? Use the bridge.
One of us uses Fb-Messenger via a bridge. Telegram also works and there are lots more.The server is also low maintenance. It’s an ansible playbook, that I irregularly run.
It takes around an hour twice a year due to changes in the playbook.Also matrix is feature rich beyond your requests. I don’t know much about the others, but matrix had emoji-reactions before WhatsApp and has threads inside of chatrooms and spaces which are collections of chats for common topics.
Also polls, sharing current/live location (not bridged to WA), voice messages and stickers.All that bridge stuff has me interested. I’d just like to put all of my chats in one place. Matrix seems like the solution for that. Just bridge everything lol.
Just be aware that many times the service you are bridging doesnt like that you are. As an example, I was bridging solely for Facebook marketplace messages and they constantly were locking my account.
@Black616Angel Also for storage, you can define message retention (1 year or similar) so your storage would also not balloon over time. In my opinion chat is ephemeral in nature.
You want Matrix. Synapse if you intend to host for others, Conduit if you just want to host for yourself. There are quite a few different clients but I do indeed use ElementX on mobile.
I’ve been having sync issues with conduit lately, takes minutes for the mobile app to catch up. No way to purge old media, or to use something S3-compatible for its storage either.
Also, element x doesn’t support spaces, so if you want to bridge other chats into matrix they all are going to be messed up together.
I like matrix as a concept, but both servers and clients are in a bit of a shitshow state (same as xmpp was years ago).
It’s kind of depressing how fragmented the Matrix ecosystem is, a bunch of clients but none seem to support everything together, servers that are slow and bloated, and don’t support super basic maintenance tasks like cleaning up old stuff, etc…
It is pretty bad. After this thread I tried using Element X again only to learn that its “favorites” aren’t the same as Element’s “favorites” and more so you can’t set someone a favorite in E-X, at least not of your server is Conduit. It’s just silently ignored.
Spaces will come but I miss them too. Threads are another feather that I miss on Elemen X
WinPopup
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 (:
