What is the best selfhostable messaging service for family?
I want to selfhost a messaging service for my family. It should be secure and have voice calling option, ideally. Thank you.
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I want to selfhost a messaging service for my family. It should be secure and have voice calling option, ideally. Thank you.
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.
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.
Leaks contact information to the other users? Can you elaborate on that? I haven't heard anything like that
That's from my own experience. I had a self-hosted matrix server running with Dendrite, and the mautrix-whatsapp bridge running. The bridge was running in puppeted mode, so upon synchronizing contacts, the bridge created "fake" users on the matrix server, one for each of my whatsapp contacts. The matrix username of these contacts is (by default)
whatsapp_<phone_number>:domain.tld. And these users are visible (at least) by other users on the same server. It was my own instance and I was the sole user so I didn't really care. But when a friend of mine wanted to try matrix, I created an account for him on the server, and when he joined, he could see all the fake whatsapp/telegram/discord users created by the bridge on the server. And as the default username includes the phone number, he basically had access to my whole phone contact list in real time.Very interesting.
https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/8969 This may be of interest- it's basically the same thing. Seems that before that patch was merged, bridge-created puppet contacts would show up in searches.
Of course that's for Synapse not Dendrite. So it sounds like Dendrite never applied that same functionality.
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.
Thanks for sharing. Couldn't get it to work but I'll try again with your compose file.
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...
At least you've been able drag them all to Signal. I've tried, but with no luck :(
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
I feel you. My problems with Signal forced me back to iMessage (actually forced me off of android and back to iOS).
I’d never considered Self-hosted messaging. It might be fun to play around with, but I can’t handle the stress of ensuring six 9s uptime for family comms.
This is what I told most of my friend when they asked me to move to signal. Is is going to be a very shitty company managed by a shitty egocentric person and you are going to regret. But you will make people move and they won't do it again and won't understand the reasons
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?
I tried setting up coturn with docker but I can't remember offhand what I had issues with. I am running a reverse proxy (Traefik) with wildcard certs. I should dig into it again. Do you happen to have any pointers or any good guides I could try following?
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.
Yes! I tried it as soon as I saw your comment. It works great! Back when I last tried it there was only one option to enter the address of one of their hosted servers. This is great news. Thanks for the tip!
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.
Also a vote for Matrix and Synapse. Works great and you can decide if you federate or not.
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.
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.
The video calls in nextcloud are a bit....hard to make work flawless, lol. You also need some amount of ram and cpu in the server.
I think you always need some amount of ram and cpu in a server... ;D Well, it's a shame if those video calls aren't working nicely without some fiddling. I'll still set up a Nextcloud at some point, for all that other stuff like calendar, contacts, office, chat and file sync. Kinda enjoying the benefits of cloud synced data, but without a corporation hosting my information and selling me to the advertisement hyenas.
Heh true that. AFAIR Nextcloud Talk Video calls need few additional stuff to be installed for working outside a LAN. You can check some details here: https://nextcloud-talk.readthedocs.io/en/latest/TURN/
I use Nextcloud Talk video calls outside my local LAN and I didn't do anything special other than install the Talk app.
Nice. Either you are lucky or I'm unlucky :). I have used it with my previous vps which only had 2 GB ram (%94 always full with services and stuff) and 1 core. The experience was not very...convincing. I have yet to test it with my new server though.
My ODroid H3+ running my Nextcloud instance is pretty over-specced, with 32 GB RAM and a 2 TB m.2 SSD, so that might explain the differing results. I'm surprised it runs so poorly on less capable hardware though. I actually have another Nextcloud instance running on a minimally specced VPS. I'll test Talk on that instance this evening and see if my results are similar to yours.
That will be a good test. It will be greatly appreciated if you post your results here or on a separate thread.
I like Matrix (I mostly use it with my sister) though XMPP might be a good option too if it's just for family.
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!
"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
I run synapse myself, so yes I am aware that it got more lightweight. But it very much depends on your usage pattern and XMPP is still easily 10x less resource heavy.
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?
DeltaChat works with encrypted e-mails.
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.
The problem of XMPP is not hosting it, it's the clients. Give me one easy-to-use guide to have
working equally well on desktop, Android and iOS, and I will gladly drop my matrix server.
exactly. in theory XMPP has everything required of a modern chat protocol, in practice however there are a void of clients which support necessary XEPs. there's Conversations on android which is alright and that's about it.
Gajim is a bloatware monster, Dino is alpha-quality, and uhh. I think that's it.
I'm not sure I understand this. All you have to have for Matrix is a homeserver.yaml file and you can spin up a docker image no problem. Are you saying more expensive resource wise?
SimpleX is nice.
I've been using it with my immediate family since my youngest doesn't have a phone plan.
Wasn't able to get snikket working when I tried.
I am also looking for a self hosted communication service for my "family" 😉
Why? Existing platforms, especially the plain cell network, are going to be far more compatible and reliable.
Because this is SelfHosted and hosting services yourself is cool?
Some people have very legitimate reasons to want a secure private communication platform, and others are just enthusiastic nerds who do it for fun.
For messaging, why not choose a secure messaging app like Signal. I get that it's not self-host, but sometimes self-hosting stuff is harder than using a reputable existing solution, much like email.
Edit: I say this as someone who self-hosts everything, I've tried running my own Matrix server, too.
Sure, but without any requirements it's hard to recommend anything. If you self-host something that's less reliable and has fewer features and can't talk to any other service, you're just handcuffing yourself; your family won't actually want to use it.
Cellphone network calls / texts aint secure at all. If you want to communicate in a secure way you need to use another seevice/app.
Many stated matriy as selfhostable service and i totally agree. Signal/Threema are also good options If you dont want to selhost.