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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Grandma uses Signal, it looks like a normal texting app, nothing special
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
Molly still have SMS integration? It use to have ability to act as an SMS/MMS client.
Signal and therefore Molly dropped support for SMS
SMS is really insecure so it makes sense
- 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.
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 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.
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!
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
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.
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.
https://snikket.org/ works well with XMPP under the hood.
Also snikket for xmpp
snikket for 2 years now. love the software!
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?
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Monal (on a mac)
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Marketing, sadly , actually works… plus network-effects
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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.
SimpleX is pretty good if you’re looking for a signal/sms replacement rather than something slack-like
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.
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 :)
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).
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’d love to run matrix but is seem/what I’m reading PITA to run.
I’m considering Zulip and Mattermost.
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…
If you want an easier Matrix self-hosting experience https://continuwuity.org/ is a good option :3
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.
