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Personally, I rather liked self-hosted versions of these: Mattermost: https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/ Rocket.Chat: https://www.rocket.chat/ ht

Personally, I rather liked self-hosted versions of these: Mattermost: https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/ Rocket.Chat: https://www.rocket.chat/ https://www.rocket.chat/ Nextcloud Talk: https://nextcloud.com/talk/ https://nextcloud.com/talk/ Out of those, Mattermost was the easiest to setup (just need PostgreSQL and a web server, in addition to the main container), however not being able to easily permanently delete instead of just archiving workspaces was awkward. Nextcloud Talk was very easy to get going if you already have Nextcloud but felt a bit barebones last I checked, whereas Rocket.Chat was overall the more pleasant option to use, although I wasn't the biggest fan of them using MongoDB for storage. The user experience is pretty good with all of them, however in the groups that I've been a part of, ultimately nobody cared about self-hosting an instance, since most orgs just prefer Teams/Slack (or even Skype for just chatting/meetings) and most informal groups just default to Discord. Oh well.

bayindirh 2y ago
The problem is not technical, but social with these platforms. i.e. How do you convince 40+ people from 5 countries to add yet another memory resident chat application and fragment their knowledge to another app/mental space? This gets way harder as the community becomes more dynamic and temporary (i.e. high circulation like students). I gave the good fight last year with someone, and they just didn't flex a nanometer citing ergonomics of Slack is way better than alternatives, and didn't care about data mining (was a possibility back then) or keeping older messages at ransom.
- KronisLV 2y ago
  > i.e. How do you convince 40+ people from 5 countries to add yet another memory resident chat application and fragment their knowledge to another app/mental space? If it's a company, you can just be like: "Hey, we use this platform for communication, you can log in with your Active Directory credentials." It also has the added benefit of acting as a directory for every employee in the company, so getting in touch can be more convenient than e-mail (while you can also customize the notification preferences, so it doesn't get too spammy), as opposed to the situation which might develop, where some teams or org units are on Slack, others on Teams and getting in touch can be more messy. If it's a free-form social group, then you can throw that idea away because of network effects, it'd be an uphill battle, same as how sometimes people complain about people using Discord for various communities, but at the same time the reality is that old school forums and such were also killed off - since most people already have a Discord account and there's less friction to just use that. Either way, I'm happy that self-hosted software like that exists.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    > If it's a company That's a big if, and the answer is "No" in my case. If it was, that comment wouldn't be there. It's not a "social group" either, but a group of independent institutions working together. It's like a large gear-train. A lot of connections between small islands of people. So you have to work together, and have to find a way somehow. So, it's complicated. > Either way, I'm happy that self-hosted software like that exists. Me too. I happen to manage a Nextcloud instance, but nobody is interested in the "Talk" module.
cowpig 2y ago
Surprised you didn't mention zulip: https://zulip.com/ https://zulip.com/ We use it and wouldn't trade it for any of the alternatives.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  Also is easy to set up and has Jitsi Meet integration and feels 10x more snappy than Slaaaaack.
- KronisLV 2y ago
  That's a lovely addition, thanks! I'll have to try it out as well at some point.

bayindirh 2y ago

The problem is not technical, but social with these platforms. i.e. How do you convince 40+ people from 5 countries to add yet another memory resident chat application and fragment their knowledge to another app/mental space? This gets way harder as the community becomes more dynamic and temporary (i.e. high circulation like students). I gave the good fight last year with someone, and they just didn't flex a nanometer citing ergonomics of Slack is way better than alternatives, and didn't care about data mining (was a possibility back then) or keeping older messages at ransom.

KronisLV 2y ago
> i.e. How do you convince 40+ people from 5 countries to add yet another memory resident chat application and fragment their knowledge to another app/mental space? If it's a company, you can just be like: "Hey, we use this platform for communication, you can log in with your Active Directory credentials." It also has the added benefit of acting as a directory for every employee in the company, so getting in touch can be more convenient than e-mail (while you can also customize the notification preferences, so it doesn't get too spammy), as opposed to the situation which might develop, where some teams or org units are on Slack, others on Teams and getting in touch can be more messy. If it's a free-form social group, then you can throw that idea away because of network effects, it'd be an uphill battle, same as how sometimes people complain about people using Discord for various communities, but at the same time the reality is that old school forums and such were also killed off - since most people already have a Discord account and there's less friction to just use that. Either way, I'm happy that self-hosted software like that exists.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  > If it's a company That's a big if, and the answer is "No" in my case. If it was, that comment wouldn't be there. It's not a "social group" either, but a group of independent institutions working together. It's like a large gear-train. A lot of connections between small islands of people. So you have to work together, and have to find a way somehow. So, it's complicated. > Either way, I'm happy that self-hosted software like that exists. Me too. I happen to manage a Nextcloud instance, but nobody is interested in the "Talk" module.

cowpig 2y ago

Surprised you didn't mention zulip: https://zulip.com/ https://zulip.com/ We use it and wouldn't trade it for any of the alternatives.

zelphirkalt 2y ago
Also is easy to set up and has Jitsi Meet integration and feels 10x more snappy than Slaaaaack.
KronisLV 2y ago
That's a lovely addition, thanks! I'll have to try it out as well at some point.