Hi. I have a group of 6 people using Discord to chat. Recently Discord changed a lot and we’re looking for an alternative. We have a few requirements:
- Good client on multiple platforms
- Easy to use search
- Self hosted
- Permanently saved chat history & attachments on server (no expiration)
- Easy image upload (Ctrl+V to post image from clipboard)
IRC isn’t an option as chat history is saved on the client, and there’s no good integrated way to share files and preview images. Matrix would be an overkill as we’re a small group not interested in federation, and the available clients had a few bugs. Mattermost lacks a good mobile app (their current one had bunch of bugs). XMPP appears to be the best as it is extensible and has many clients available.
However, I tried configuring prosody on my FreeBSD server and it seems like it doesn’t permanently save chat history or attachment files. Does anyone know if these can be solved? Or is there any better alternative than XMPP?
Thanks.
You don’t have to federate with matrix.
Curious: what are the bugs you encountered? I guess you looked deeper into element (or schildichat). The next version is on its way but not yet ready for prime time. In the long run it’ll be your best bet.
One of the members and I used to chat on Matrix some time ago. I didn’t encounter much issues but he had an awful experience (android/Windows, encryption related things and minor glitches on the client such as when syncing) that he refuses to move to Matrix unfortunately…
Understand the issue. I know those bugs. Those were funny times. That didn’t happen in a long time
I maintained an ejabberd server for myself and a few friends for many years. The config language was a little arcane to me at first, but it was pretty solid after I got it set up. I used a couple of different client apps with it over that time, most of which are still available on the F-droid repo. It was fun, but got annoying when the server needed maintenance, or was down, or because of any of the other minor nuisances that come along with maintaining a service for others to use.
Eventually we all ended up just moving over to Signal because it was just as good from the view of cost-benefit and risk for us. We’re just trading stupid memes and Saturday night stories among ourselves. The most radical thing we might organize is a trip to Vegas for the week.
Definitely try it out, but consider that being a comms provider for others is always a bigger chore than it seems at the outset.
The most annoying thing about Signal is that they don’t for some reason allow registering from desktop directly, so I had to use signal-cli. Which is inconvenient AF and it’s a shame they haven’t added a feature as simple as “input an SMS code in the desktop client”.
Anyway, glad I only have to use it for a couple of guys and only with my real identity. So happy XMPP exists, and I have most of my 1-to-1 messaging with internet friends there. Very easy to host.
I hear you. The desktop wasn’t Signal’s primary market, and that’s pretty clear in their implementation. On the other hand, that difficulty registering a desktop servuce may make it less attractive to would-be bot farms and spammers. Its a thin one, but I see that as a silver lining.
Not just bot-farms and spammers, but just a regular person. What is Signal’s main feature? Encryption. You would not want to expose your sensitive chats to a smartphone, unless it has a privacy-respecting OS (which not all phones can do). Good thing I only have to use it with a couple of guys who don’t want to use other encrypted communication methods.
Did you ever get carbons working properly? (As in, mobile and desktop clients of the same user both getting messages and marking as read remotely between them)
Many years ago I used XMPP with Prosody and it was ok.
- You can setup some retention time for attachments and history depending on the space you have.
- There are clients for multiple platforms but not very much advanced vs competition.
- Security is good with omemo protocol. In so e clients you have to turn it on since it’s not by default.
- Audio video calls on one to one is good as long as you setup stun coturn server. Android to iOS calls still in progress.
- Check out Snikket for an all in one solution.
You might want to also consider Matrix (dendrite option ?) for your needs.
I just started hosting Matrix in addition to XMPP (just because some communities prefer it now), and I find it bothersome that it saves chat history and media to every participating server. IDK how much of an issue chat logs would be, but media scares me a lot. Hopefully cleaning old files manually would not break anything…
Anyway, I started with Conduit rather than Dendrite, and it seems like a good experience. Could not even hope to get Synapse going on my weak VPS.
Ah good to know about Conduit!
Well that’s how the protocol works saving data on every participating server.
Simplex chat might be another alternative but is on early development as far as groups and desktop client.
Thanks. Have you tried configuring infinite time for retention/attachments/history? I can’t find a way to disable those limits completely. Conversations on Android and Pidgin on Linux/Windows look pretty good, I’ve yet to find a good OSX one though. I’ll try checking out Snikket, thanks.
Unfortunately I don’t remember about the retention setting.
I would avoid Pidgin since I’m not so sure they implement fully omemo encryption. Try Gajim.
I am surprised that no one mentioned snikket yet, which is essentially a distribution of Prosody with sane defaults and a custom client.
Thanks, actually WeAreAllOne@lemm.ee mentioned it earlier lol. I’m planning to try this as I get a linux box running.
I would go with Prosody or Ejabberd, and here’s a good comparison: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45531372 and Ejabberd is the most used thing out there. https://xmpp.org/software/
Thanks. I’ll try Ejabberd as well :)
This is interesting. I’ve never heard of this project but it looks really neat.
We’ve been using it on our phones and desktops for three years now, it’s very stable
Do you self host your email or use it with an email provider? Also, does it need its own inbox/address to function? I can’t really tell from the documentation if it functions along side normal emails or if it’ll mess up your inbox if you use it with your normal inbox/address.
We use a self-hosted roundcube mail server, which is not necessary, and we did initially assign each person an additional account dedicated to delta.chat to prevent inbox clutter, but that didn’t happen.
Nowadays, we prefer to send and receive emails in delta.chat. One of my groups already has 70 members, contains a lot of images and PDFs, and it’s still very fluid to use.
We also run bots for integration with other systems, such as task management, meeting notifications, etc.
Awesome - thanks for the info!
Looks interesting, but isn’t this slow though?
Our chatroom is very active and the members won’t move if it’s much slower compared to Discord unfortunately…
It’s basically real-time, even sending large files is very fast, I don’t know the details of the reason, maybe it’s because there is not much difference between IMAP and TLS, or because the roundcube we deploy is super fast?
Nextcloud has chat capabilities. Perhaps it might be overkill for chat alone but presumably you also want some collaboration with documents.
Yes, but Nextcloud is also a perpetually half made project that breaks at every corner and requires a lot of resources.
Speaking from experience from the last five years, it’s been pretty good for me.
It’s just a room for chatting among friends so not really, but I’ll check this out as well, thanks.
Hands down Revolt. Best alternative I have found so far.
I’ve tried installing and using revolt. It’s okay and our members like it but the lack of support and a usable control panel makes it hard to choose.
Prosody claims to support Message Archive Management and HTTP file sharing, sounds like the feature you want, or at least it is close.
Yeah it seems to have bunch of plugins but it’s not working well for some reason… :(
Signal is a good alternatives as you can group call and screen share (no audio), share images and videos etc. Messages are saved locally on devices unless a timer is set on the chat
Thanks, but it’s not ideal for our usage, it’s not selfhosted and there aren’t many clients available. Plus it doesn’t have unlimited message and attachments history.
Which flavor of XMPP you tried?
As I mentioned in the OP I tried Prosody on my FreeBSD server, I’ve yet to get attachments working.
Oh sorry, misread exactly this part. I’ve had great experience with ejabberd, maybe worth trying it.
You can have non-federated Matrix. And XMPP is federated as well.
XMPP is probably fine. I haven’t used it but people say it’s good.
You’re right that XMPP is federated as well and Matrix can be non-federated but I’ve heard some people had trouble with the Synapse server chugging resources despite not using federation.
You all are welcome at DumbDevices XMPP. You can create an account with conversations app.
Looks great. Though we’d prefer selfhosting as of now. Thanks for the info.
For 6 people, why do you want to host a server? You can use any service for now.
I get what you’re saying, but this feels like a weird question to ask in a community for selfhosting enthusiasts.
I host an XMPP server. I did it as there is none here in Bharat. It is not worth hosting for 6 people.
Only a small set of users is all the more reason to self-host, in my opinion.
‘Small’?
A lot of people (me included) host servers for a single person, lol. This is more than normal.
