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!
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.
Yea, we tried Signal a while back, but for whatever reason we didn’t care for it.