Hello,
I’ve been self hosting Nextcloud for the last half a year, and my family has been using Nextcloud Talk to communicate. However, as cool it is overall, we suffer from a lot of missed messages. I’ve been keeping an eye on (and contributing to) the Android app, but even with all the updates, it seems like they can’t quite figure out the issue with notifications not appearing consistently. My wife is fed up, so I’m looking for alternatives.
It seems like Matrix is the next logical one to try, but the Android apps have pretty poor reviews. A lot of the self hosted messengers also seem to be more like Slack replacements, rather than focused on family & friend use.
Has anyone had a good experience with a self hosted messenger for family use?
Thanks!
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- Signal
- XMPP
- Matrix
In that order. I self-host both XMPP and Matrix, and I wouldn’t want to stop using matrix. Spaces, arbitrary amounts of self-chats, and so on are great. I use matrix every day.
But for chatting… It sooner or later fails you. It’s slow. Notifications break. Messages are shown as sent, but somehow do not appear in the recipient’s devices until TWO WEEKS LATER (yeah IDK, happened twice already, in different chats and directions. Best part is, I’m not even federated!). Encryption is great IF YOU KNOW SOME CRYPTOGRAPHY BASICS, and utterly confusing otherwise.
XMPP just works. Especially the calls, holy shit, I had to fight Matrix for so long to make voice and video calls work, and xmpp just… Works. Notifications are way more reliable (as in, have been absolutely perfect). I really like monocles as a chat app on Android. (The downside is: can’t decrypt old messages on new devices, and desktop clients are ugly.)
So why Signal above XMPP?
Because it’s not your fault should something ever break in a vital service. Also the encryption and privacy afforded by it a great.
https://snikket.org/ works well with XMPP under the hood.
Also snikket for xmpp
snikket for 2 years now. love the software!
Android notifications are notoriously difficult to get right. May I ask how is Nextcloud Talk currently implementing notifications? Is it through ntfy, a background service, or Google’s Firebase? Have you allowed background usage for both the push app and the chat app?
I use Matrix with Continuwuity and Element X, and it’s doable most of the time except for small bugs. If you disable federation, the resource usage should be minimal too. But it also requires a third party for push service which can be unreliable.
On the XMPP side, there is also Snikket which you could look into. It offers both a server (running modified Prosody) and a mobile client (modified Conversations). XMPP can run as an efficient background service on Android, so it’ll receive in-band notifications.
Regardless of options, one of the main problem I’m aware of is that Android variants tend to overkill various background app, leading to missed notifications. I think it’s better to debug on that aspect as well
I believe Nextcloud Talk uses FCM for notifications. The issue doesn’t seem to be on the FCM side, it’s the client marking messages as read incorrectly, or not notifying because it thinks it’s running in the foreground, etc. They’re definitely working on these issues, but my family has lost confidence in it.
I will check out Snikket, thanks!
I ran Snikket for a while a couple of months ago - notifications in the iOS app were late or never arrived till you opened the app.
But it also requires a third party for push service
not necessarily, you can host ntfy or something else yourself too
Hi, ntfy/another unified push backend is the third party. As in: it doesn’t just go between you and your server
well, that’s true, the reason for that is battery efficiency. the chat client does not need to be awaken constantly to receive notifications, a lightweight app can do that which will wake up the chat client when needed. fewer long term network connections, lower idle memory usage, faster routines handling the bare minimum
I’ve been doing research on this and came down to two.
- simplex
- delta chat
simplex won because of the robust encryption and selfhosted option.
a close contender was stoneage. I liked all it took was an S3 bucket. I didn’t like that it hasn’t been updated in 3 years.
SimpleX is going away I thought. Any reason you don’t want to use Signal, or setup XMPP/Jabber/Snikket/Prosody, etc.
signal has privacy problems.
xmpp/jabber/snikket have encryption and security problems.
from what I can see simplex has everything I need.
- selfhosted
- e2e encryption
- forward security
- routinely maintained
- does not require user IDs
My hesitation to using simplex is the selfhosting aspect of it. I’ve been researching the simplex protocol (SMP) and have been thinking out ways to develop a serverless version of it, that way you don’t get charged for something that’s not being used if you host it in the cloud.
anyway, just my 2¢.
Try Simplex on Yunohost. I mean, it’s about as clean/quick as can be iirc. Simplex has the lead in security, but I recall the app stating they couldn’t keep servers funded and are shutting down. So you might need to run your own to be on the safe side.
Signal had privacy problems?? Maybe using Google play notifications? I download the apk to be Google free, works on my lineage OS just fine without micro g.
XMPP, if you’re all within the same ecosystem vs SMS or RCS chat (which only carriers services support), it’ll use OMEMO encryption and is e2e encryption. I host my own instance to have a little extra control. And that’s on top of everything else secure about it. Anyway, I believe you can enable traffic over Tor for XMPP, but I do not have that bc it breaks voice calls.
Signal had privacy problems?? Maybe using Google play notifications?
I’m not a fan of having my personal identity tied to it. last I checked signal still requires* a phone number.
looks like I might have been wrong originally, but it looks like signal actually does fwd secrecy as well as post-quantum encryption.
keep in mind I’m replacing telegram. I have put off moving for some years but I have the itch to replace it now. simplex also has the closest feature-pairity to telegram out of all the messengers on that list.
also I’m building and hosting this for very nontechnical users. if they heard tor they’d think it was the “darknet”.
my goal is
- keep it secure
- keep it private
- keep it simple
I’d love to run matrix but is seem/what I’m reading PITA to run.
I’m considering Zulip and Mattermost.
If you want an easier Matrix self-hosting experience https://continuwuity.org/ is a good option :3
You have bo idea how much of a pain in the ass mattermost is. Basically corporate trying to leech off of opensource. I decided to make it the messenger in our org 3 4 years ago. But I might move away from it if it starts acting up more.
I run Mattermost successfully for a small-ish academic professional org, and tbh it’s been simple, straightforward, and really pretty good. I live in constant fear of the ever-nearing and inevitable rug-pull, though – they do seem to regard the open-source/self-hostable side as something they do on a minimum-effort basis only because they have to, so I would be hesitant to go down this road if I was starting again.
The last update was obviously vibe coded. At least all the UI was fucked up. All sizings were messed up, colors were inverted.
And don’t get me started on continuously moving pre-existing community features into “paid only”. First boards was almost deprecated, then playbooks.
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I’m still on the 10.x branch (will need to upgrade to the 11.x branch in a few weeks, after the annual conference is done), so I didn’t experience the UI fuck up, but it sounds ominous… sigh…
SimpleX is pretty good if you’re looking for a signal/sms replacement rather than something slack-like
xmpp. don’t matrix, it causes selfhosting-phobia for normies because its ui sucks. i had a friend try matrix with me for a while and now they’re never trying another foss messenger again unless its proved to be very good.
My family and friends all use matrix to communicate and works fine for everyone.
I’ve used XMPP for this before, using ejabberd as the server and Conversations/Monal as the client, it worked pretty well, altho ejabberd can be a bit of a handful to get running initially.
Does it have to be self-hosted? I’ve had tons of problems with Matrix. Many fewer issues with XMPP.
Chatmail is probably the easiest and best bet for reliability. Deltachat is the OG but I like Arcanechat, it’s a fork with more features.
I guess it doesn’t have to be, but I really like the idea of having control over the data, and not handing it over to some other entity, even if they say they’re not evil. It just seems like communication without a 3rd party in between is a good idea, so I’m trying to make that work for now.
+1 for XMPP
I’m currently using a public server until I get my own (Raspberry Pi based) Prosody server running
Never had a missed notification / message and video calls are great too… even Grandma can use it
Using Conversations (Android) and Monal (ios)
I host snikket (which is built on top of prosody) for my family and (especially) my pre-teen children and their friends. Pretty happy with it, all things considered.
Definitely decentralization is a good idea, but it also adds a layer of complexity that many are unable to grasp. Signal is always the easiest but I have major concerns about their longevity.
I use Signal because it’s the best balance of privacy and security vs. convenience and reliability I have found. Not self-hosted, but I’ve yet to find a self hosted alternative that is as reliable, especially since I don’t want to set up distributed servers, and it’s one of those things that “just needs to work” or people will abandon it quickly.
And the older people I’ve convinced to use it, like my mom, have had very little trouble adopting it. It helped that RCS messaging is so unreliable on my phone since Google or my carrier keep seeming to break it (likely became I use GrapheneOS), and also for those with iPhones it is way more compatible with itself vs Apple and Google refusing to implement RCS in a way that all features work between them, like message reactions. Without RCS, my mom couldn’t send me decent quality pictures of my niece all the time, and I couldn’t send nice pictures of my outfits to the girl I’m dating, LOL.
My wife and I use Signal. It works well.
I’m hosting a matrix/synapse server and it’s been pretty great tbh. I use this ansible project to manage installation and updates for me and it’s been fairly painless
Signal or Molly are probably going to be your best bets
Just want to note that Molly IS Signal, just a fork of it with some added features, in case OP isn’t aware. Definitly just go for Signal unless you have a specific reason to use Molly.
I like Molly a lot better personally
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Signal and therefore Molly dropped support for SMS
SMS is really insecure so it makes sense
Delta chat seems pretty good, you can easily self host and it’s very lightweight.
I do not recommend matrix, the apps aren’t great, and hosting is a lot to deal with.
I am using conduit as a matrix server and fluffy chat as my main app. I think that most people could be happy with that :)
