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.

  • poVoqEnglish
    6•13 days ago

    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 JoinJabber.org has a good list of up to date clients (do not use Pidgin, it’s horrible and super outdated).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).

    • @[email protected]English
      2•13 days ago

      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.

      • poVoqEnglish
        5•13 days ago

        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.