Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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From my experience (with Dendrite, not synapse, so keep that in mind), bridges create "fake" users to replicate your contacts on these platform as matrix users, and they are visible on the whole instance by all their users (but you might not be able to talk to them). Also, in puppeted mode (which is what you want to "replace" your app with matrix), only a single user can use the bridge at a time, so the other users cannot use it.
This is true but if you're self-hosting it's not that much bother to add additional copies of a bridge for other users (granted, it's not ideal).
Bridges were not that easy to manage in my case (regarding process management, and ease of config deployment/reproductibility). It was on OpenBSD though, so your mileage may vary. And still, it leaks all of your contact informations to the other users of the server (like their phone number eventually), so definitely not suited for public instances.
We have to wait the interoperability that the EU (with the Digital Markets Act) has asked to the big tech. We will be able to use a single app to communicate to people that are on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.
I host my own matrix instance for my wife, a few friends and I. It has worked great for us. They can either use a web app, or an app on their phone.
Hey , do you have a guide on how to host my own matrix server?
I used the official docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/matrixdotorg/synapse/
My compose file looks like this: https://pastebin.com/3JYzAPr2
Pretty sure I just followed the instructions there.
how have you secured your server when opening your network to the outside?
I'm using a cloudflare tunnel for it. I also have crowdsec installed, only allow ssh keys and only from my IP (I have a static from my ISP), and no ports open other than the ones needed.
I'm on Signal (obviously not self hosted) and even if I really wanted to move to another platform be it self hosted or yet another privacy focussed one, I can't ask my friends and family to move to another platform again. I already asked them to move away from WhatsApp, can't do it again..
💯 this. It took me several years to get most of my friends, co-workers and family to Signal...
I got my family onto Signal last winter and it works great for us. And half of them aren't even very techy. But the interface is a lot like SMS so it was an easy transition for them
Matrix.
Matrix (synapse server) probably fits the bill.
We use Matrix (Synapse) and it works extremely well. I just wish I could get a STUN/TURN server working...
My family has been using Synapse since before Covid hit, including TURN server (coturn) for audio and video calls. No complaints about the UI so far, except for Element on iPhone reportedly "freezing" for a few moments when sending messages - and that was over a year ago.
What problems do you have getting TURN to work?
Also a vote for Matrix and Synapse. Works great and you can decide if you federate or not.
Another Nextcloud user here. If you setup a Nextcloud server you will see many benefits, with the Talk app being just one of them. Install OnlyOffice and you can even collaboratively edit documents in the web browser similar to Google Docs or o365. I really can't recommend Nextcloud enough. Anyone who is into self hosting should at least give it a try.
The only downside to the OnlyOffice document server is that if you can't edit documents through the Nextcloud app (or mobile browser) on your phone with the community edition. However, you can set up your Nextcloud instance in the OnlyOffice documents app on your phone, and edit that way.
That's a great tip! I had no idea that you could do that with the OnlyOffice app now. I tried a few years ago and you could only connect to their hosted services. This is a game changer! I had been doing all my editing on the desktop.
Yup. In the clouds section of the app, you have options for OnlyOffice cloud, OwnCloud, Nextcloud, kdrive, some crappy well known proprietary ones, and any WebDAV storage. Once I figured that out, I was pretty happy.
I've tried setting it up three times now but I keep getting permission errors before I can even get into it. Is there a good guide to it somewhere?
Try this tutorial if you are on x86 architecture:
https://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-install-nextcloud-on-debian-11/
Are you comfortable installing Linux and using the terminal?
Edit: nvm this somehow responded to the wrong post.
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.
Voice / video requires a separate TURN server, IIRC.
We use Rocketchat and love it. Been thinking about moving to Matrix but, at this point I've got my whole family hooked on Rocket
Since we use Nextcloud, we just use Talk. It works well enough for us, but you should also host a TURN/STUN Server with that.
Mattermost is really nice. They added voice calling as a beta feature a while ago and it works pretty good so far.
I like Matrix (I mostly use it with my sister) though XMPP might be a good option too if it's just for family.
Nextcloud looks really great and it has a chat / video chat too, I want to give it a spin in the future, as it also allows you to self-host a lot of things that people usually outsource to Microsoft, Google or Apple.
Don't listen to all the Matrix fanboys here 😅 It's no fun having to manage the massive server application and the mobile apps pretty much suck.
I would go for https://snikket.org/ which is a lightweight all in one solution based on XMPP specifically designed for what you want.
Massive server application? Running on a PI 3? If you don't want to federate with massive servers it's super lightweight!
Just for a family and friends I'd go for xmpp. Matrix is still an enormous greavy piece of software, hard to self host if you don't want to pay for a gigantic server just for it. Also the UI is more like gamer/company chat (discord, slack...), what may not be what your family expect, coming from whatsapp, telegram, or plain sms. In the contrary xmpp is very light and nowadays a lot of tutorial exists on how to configure it, even with voice/video. Plus mobile apps like conversation match the habbits of other messengers.
This is outdated info. Matrix doesn't need lots of resources these days. "for instance Synapse uses 5-10x less RAM than it used to (my personal federated server is only using 145MB of RAM atm!" - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special-2022/#making-it-fast
Host it for free https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/ & https://paul.totterman.name/posts/matrix-server-guide/
How's bandwidth? I was thinking of possibly hosting one but read its pretty killer there too. I unfortunately only got 20 Mbps upload.
Did you checkout matrix/element?