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!
You must log in or # to comment.
Make sure the app is set to “unrestricted” under battery settings. Most phones get really aggressive nuking down stuff that is not from FAANG
https://snikket.org/ works well with XMPP under the hood.
snikket for 2 years now. love the software!
Also snikket for xmpp
I have never understood why there is no protocol that allows for multi-master node setup(if a message is written to one, then queue to write to the second one and ignore timestamp missmatchning and conflict resolution(It does not have to be perfect) - matrix put too much effort into this IMO).
For family i use Signal. My coworkers use IRC and I have it setup in link-mode for multi master support(but IRC does not have new features like send image, thread, reactions, emoji, text-styling, audio/video calls). Using unrealircd. Neat when the local city network is up but the fiber connection from the city network to the internet is down so I can still write to some friends, or dont care about uptime on my server since they fallback to the second, free, Oracle VM.
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 :)
@anakin78z We use xmpp (prosody on the server; a mix of conversations/cheogram/dino/snikket on our phones and laptops). We’ve got a family chat where the kids share the latest memes, and we message back and forth. We do also have signal (or in my case, Molly) installed, but don’t use it that much. My wife just switched phones and signal was unable to transfer stuff from phone phone to the other - in general I find signal annoying to use.
Thanks for the info. My wife and I tried Signal a while back and didn’t care for it.
I’m trying to get xmpp going today, even just as a test. 🤞
My wife and I tried Signal a while back and didn’t care for it.
What about it didn’t you like? I have no investment in Signal, my curiosity is just piqued since my wife and I use it.
It wasn’t one specific thing. We were switching from Facebook Messenger, and found ourselves not wanting to use it all that much, often falling back to Messenger. For me, personally, I also didn’t like that it didn’t have a web client.
Fair enough. Signal does ship desktop clients for Windows, Mac, and even Linux; I’m actually using the Linux desktop client to chat with my wife right now.
It’s something 🤷
@anakin78z I still have to use Matrix for work. The clients suck (literally every single one I’ve tried, and I even briefly maintained Neochat for debian) and I routinely get key errors.
That’s pretty cool that you use Matrix for work!
Buddy is selfhostig Matrix via Element server suite community edition and using element X on android as well as the normal element app on desktop. Never missed a notification, never
I’ve been using Synapse with Element X (earlier Element) for years. I remember, notifications were a problem some time ago, but it got a lot better. I also have ntfy as notification backend.
With Element X there are finally video conferences possible.
The fun one is host an OSCAR server and use AIM.
I’m using matrix for years with my wife and my mom, never really had issues, but maybe my requirements are not that high.
I self hosted matrix for probably a year after me and some people started getting spam on telegram. It was the first thing I really self hosted beyond jellyfin (and plex before that) so I didn’t really fully understand what was I doing and that could have affected things.
I had a few hurdles that made it not work out for me and my friends/family. First, the end to end encryption, one of the main “selling” points I feel, makes it complicated to sign in for people who don’t care about any of that. You end up getting a code to save, I had to verify them at first, we’d have times where something still showed unverified, etc.
Just started hosting nextcloud recently and I’m also seeing the notification issue, but at least you just sign up and start using it.
I also noticed in matrix we never got notifications for emoji reactions (which we all use with each other). Other notifications were relatively solid though.
I never got webrtc and some stuff working and I sort of lost steam trying, so we could use element or fluffychat but not element X and we couldn’t have big group calls or anything like that. That’s probably on me though, but in fairness nextcloud aio just has a checkbox and all that stuff works.
Since I’m the only dork in my little group interested in this stuff I abandoned matrix when nobody used it.
Grandma uses Signal, it looks like a normal texting app, nothing special
Seconding the XMPP reccomendation- I run Prosody, which has been rock solid and stays up even when other services I run go down. File sharing, E2EE, reactions, voice and video calls- everything you’d expect from a modern messenger. Cheogram or Conversations are great Android clients, and Monal is the iOS client I’d reccomend.
What do you use for desktop?
I wonder why not more people choose XMPP. What do you think?
I use Gajim on Windows and Linux, Dino when I need to call, and Monal on Mac. XMPP is older and less trendy at the moment, and it’s a large, partially fragmented ecosystem- that might hold back mainstream adoption. But it’s the horse I’d bet on long-term.
-
Monal (on a mac)
-
Marketing, sadly , actually works… plus network-effects
-
I’m not sure what the problem with the android version of Element X might be, it works perfectly for me and my wife. Voice and vid work fine, but that’s also using the matrix.org server. YMMV with your own self-hosted server, I have one for my agents but I haven’t used voice/vid with it.
And yah, I had high hopes for NC Talk, but it’s not worth the trouble even if you provision a STUN/TURN server.
Matrix works well for me.
It’s not out yet, but I’d keep an eye on Flatline. It’s by the people who make Molly (Signal client fork—it’s pretty good, been using it for years). Flatline is a Molly-compatible server implementation, i.e. so that you can host your own Signal server. Because generally if someone asked for a “reliable messenger for family use” I’d recommend Signal as a polished and reliable option, though not self-hostable unfortunately.
Just a fair warning: Element (Matrix client) also had issues with notifications not appearing in time, or attachments/images not loading. (This is on a self-hosted Synapse with a handful of people and 1 bridge).
I haven’t kept up much with new developments, but last I remember, hosting the official Element Server Suite Community requires Kubernetes. Third-party servers or some install scripts are an option though.
I’ve had good notifications maybe 2,5 years ago? I don’t remember for how long. Nowadays the notifications are very unreliable (selfhosted, ntfy, any android app).
