I want to selfhost a messaging service for my family. It should be secure and have voice calling option, ideally. Thank you.

  • Scott@lem.free.as
    1·
    1 year ago

    Matrix. With its bridges you can “wire-in” networks like WhatsApp, Slack, Signal, Telegram, Discord, iMessage, SMS, e-mail, … and have a single app that interacts with them all. You can have a single group chat with users from all those networks participating and no one would be any the wiser.

  • johntash@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    If you’re already using Nextcloud, it has a chat w/ video chat as well.

    Matrix / Synapse / Element.io is also pretty cool. The UX might not be on par with what some family expects though. I don’t know if voice/video chat is built-in yet or not, but it was at least an option before.

  • gfle@szmer.info
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • rglullis@communick.news
      01·
      1 year ago

      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.