I want to selfhost a messaging service for my family. It should be secure and have voice calling option, ideally. Thank you.
I’m on Signal (obviously not self hosted) and even if I really wanted to move to another platform be it self hosted or yet another privacy focussed one, I can’t ask my friends and family to move to another platform again. I already asked them to move away from WhatsApp, can’t do it again…
This is what I told most of my friend when they asked me to move to signal. Is is going to be a very shitty company managed by a shitty egocentric person and you are going to regret. But you will make people move and they won’t do it again and won’t understand the reasons
Matrix (synapse server) probably fits the bill.
Why? Existing platforms, especially the plain cell network, are going to be far more compatible and reliable.
Matrix works, but it’s way harder and more expensive to selfhost than for example XMPP, which can be hosted even on cheapest VPS or first RPi. I would definitely take the cost and “how hard is it to maintain in the long run” into consideration.
Mattermost also works and is pretty easy to selfhost, but it doesn’t have federation.
Another option is always an email with delta.chat - I don’t think it offers voice calling, but email is one of the most basic services one can host, and many automated solutions to help with that exist.
The problem of XMPP is not hosting it, it’s the clients. Give me one easy-to-use guide to have
- e2ee text messaging
- groups
- audio/video calling
working equally well on desktop, Android and iOS, and I will gladly drop my matrix server.
Another Nextcloud user here. If you setup a Nextcloud server you will see many benefits, with the Talk app being just one of them. Install OnlyOffice and you can even collaboratively edit documents in the web browser similar to Google Docs or o365. I really can’t recommend Nextcloud enough. Anyone who is into self hosting should at least give it a try.
