And just FYI, use case is simply texting with friends and family, while avoiding state monitoring.
Signal. There's nothing better for security, ease of use, and features. It's a drop in replacement for texts and imessage and facetime.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Thanks for reply. Unfortunately, we can't use it, should be exclusively selfhosted service :( I do like Signal, tho, great app
That's rough. Signal is the only app that can actually be trusted to resist state monitoring because it has a successful history of it.
I guess another option to throw into the pool is https://docs.cwtch.im/ then. It's new though, and not as easy to use.
Lots. But the difficulty as ever is finding something that the people you want to talk about are also using.
Let's just that we all are so fucked, that we'd use anything that works. So that's not a problem to convince them to switch, we all are ready to switch
Prosody (XMPP server). Setup takes an hour at most even if you have never worked with Lua. Easy to interact with (it has a built-in shell), easy on system resources, and easy-to-understand config. Support for groups, E2EE, attachments including videos and voice recordings, among others.
Thanks, will check it out. If it's not too bothersome, could you specify why XMPP would be a better choice than other options? The protocol itself, I mean. There's a lot of contradicting info on each of the protocols. Some say XMPP is ancient, choose matrix. Others say matrix is a complicated mess, choose more mature XMPP
XMPP is ancient. So is email, the internet, and the wheel.
or snikket, the docker version of this with some things pre configuration-tated
There is probably something wrong with your setup, if Synapse has these problems.
I've been running Synapse for years, including voice/videocalls and even video conferences.
That's definitely possible. But the weirdest thing was the inconsistency of every issue. As an example - voice calls worked on the web client, but didn't on mobile. Client issue perhaps, tho I tried, like, almost every mainstream mobile client
Try Delta chat (chatmail server)
Gamers Nexus posted a video recently about Discord alternatives.
That was a great video actually. I thought that Zuli was kinda cool, shame it's a paid service. Not that I mind paying, just quite literally can't. Funnily enough, they hit the same issue with broken voice calls on mobile Element client
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.
[Thread #173 for this comm, first seen 16th Mar 2026, 21:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Well, I think XMPP or Snikket is worth a try and definitely more reliable than Matrix, but you might also want to look at DeltaChat.