What is the best selfhostable messaging service for family?

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...
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. 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).

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.

Also a vote for Matrix and Synapse. Works great and you can decide if you federate or not.

Matrix (synapse server) probably fits the bill.

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.

aa
Voice / video requires a separate TURN server, IIRC.

I like Matrix (I mostly use it with my sister) though XMPP might be a good option too if it's just for family.

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?

Matrix.

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.

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.

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

Did you checkout matrix/element?

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.

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.

DeltaChat works with encrypted e-mails.

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!

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

e2ee text messaging

groups

audio/video calling

working equally well on desktop, Android and iOS, and I will gladly drop my matrix server.

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.
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.
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.