Best option on Cloudron to replace WhatsApp?

[scooke]

Hi everyone,
I left facebook a few years ago. But continued using Instagram and WhatsApp. Now however, I am looking to leave both. I figure I will host my own Pixelfed to replace IG, but what about WhatsApp? Which chatting app would best replace it?

More specifically - which app would be easiest for my family, friends, contacts, etc., switch to to keep in touch with me, in terms of them installing an app and making an account.

Plus, for me, in terms of making separate channels, or rooms, or whathaveyou, so that disparate groups of people aren't all in one massive chat room. But also separate channels/rooms, that don't necessarily appear as such. So that my family can click a link I send them, and voila, we are chatting in a new environment that's just us, that doesn't show other chat environments.

Obviously, I could trial and error all the apps to find out, but if anyone here has already done this, or just has some good insights, that would help me decide which app to host and start my post-WhatsApp online life.

Much thanks!

[marcusquinn]

Lowest friction and best security seems to be Signal, although not self-hosted, it's easier to connect with people when an app already has a significant user-base.

Over the last couple of weeks I've seen new people from my addressbook joining Signal every day, it does seem to be winning the mindshare race to replace WhatsApp to the point it has forced WhatsApp to postpone their Ts & Cs update for 3 months, presumable because they can see the tidal wave of movement away and hopefully that extrapolates to zero

[nebulon]

On the self-hosted front, I personally use matrix+element. For me it is in the intersection of slack/telegram feature wise. Also the mobile app is good. If you have a distinct group (say family) where the network effect does not matter much, it probably become a personal taste given the various options with their various slightly different client apps.

[marcusquinn]

From what I read here, Matrix-based seems to be the most secure, and as I understand is encrypted.

Honestly, from trying all the options on Cloudron, Rocket.chat for me has the nicest user experience and mobile App. Plus, Rocket.chat the only mobile App that allows for multi-server switching.

[mario]

@marcusquinn nothing prevents us from packaging Signal and making it self-hosted

[edapm]

@scooke Not a Cloudron-specific list, but here is a list of self-hosted alternatives: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#communication-systems

[scooke]

@nebulon If I make a new room and invite only my family, for example, will they be able to see other groups when they login? Maybe phrased a different way, can groups be made invisible to each other?

[scooke]

@marcusquinn Thanks for the reply. Here is the same question for you as for @nebulon: If I make a new "room" and invite only my family, for example, will they be able to see other groups when they login? Maybe phrased a different way, can groups be made invisible to each other?

[marcusquinn]

@mario Now that is interesting!

Someone want to do an App Request post for that?

[marcusquinn]

@scooke That is certainly possible with Rocket Chat.

I didn't spend much more time on the Matrix apps after finding they didn't work well for multi-server and the user interfaces felt a bit too difficult.

If it were me, and you are set on it being a Cloudron solution, I'd say try Rocket Chat first and see if you like it.

Element & Mattermost I found quite quirky, although all apps are.

I feel your difficulty in deciding because, you are right, they all do require a lot of usage experience to really know, and in some ways they all have curiosities that can be annoying or take longer to work out than some of the more consumer-friendly options like Signal etc.

Hope that helps, and interested to know what you decide and how you get on.

[robi]

@mario said in Best option on Cloudron to replace WhatsApp?:

@marcusquinn nothing prevents us from packaging Signal and making it self-hosted

Did some digging:
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/9nnw4o/selfhosting_signal/

https://github.com/aqnouch/Signal-Setup-Guide

https://github.com/madeindra/setup-guide

[scooke]

@marcusquinn Hmm, I see Rocket.Chat requires min 2GB of memory, whereas a Matrix+Element install needs min 756 MB. What are your thoughts about this? Does RC really need 2 GB??

[marcusquinn]

@scooke Maybe - but it's shared memory, so I don't think you'll notice any issues, unless you have a VPS with only 2Gb RAM, then you probably don't want much on it anyway. Best I can say is try it and see the before/after total memory usage graph.

Also, try the mobile app, its the best of the bunch and when you compare I'm sure you'll see the difference, and simpler is often easier to support too

[jdaviescoates]

IMHO the best option for replacing WhatsApps is Signal.

But if going for something already on Cloudron I'd say just go with Rocket.Chat

Matrix seems to be confusing for everyone, geeks included. And as I understand it Mattermost doesn't have proper roles and permissions.

[marcusquinn]

Updating my self-hosted recommendation here from Rocket Chat to Nextcloud Talk — we've migrated.

It's a lot more manageable, useable, scaleable and WhatsApp-like — users transitioned from WhatsApp to Talk actually seem to like it. You'd be surprised how many businesses chat system is WhatsApp!

signal.org remains my best of the bunch for not being Facebook, but with caution that your data is still locked in.

beeper.com looks interesting, need to give it a try.

[LoudLemur]

@scooke WhatsApp is a phone messaging application, right? The following do not need Cloudron but would be worth a look I think:

Signal
https://signal.org/en/

Session
https://getsession.org

Berty
https://berty.tech/

[marcusquinn]

@LoudLemur Nice, really interesting read. Bugs me that some great ideas have kinda awkward names for the hearts & minds side of user adoption, but the do seem to talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk here:

• https://berty.tech/challenges

[marcusquinn]

Installed Berty - does look very slick actually - DM me anyone wanting to test. Seems to be mobile apps only at the mo.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Best option on Cloudron to replace WhatsApp?:

Updating my self-hosted recommendation here from Rocket Chat to Nextcloud Talk — we've migrated.

Interesting.

We may do that too actually.

It's supposed to be possible to connect Rocket.Chat and Nextcloud by automatically storing uploads to Rocket.Chat on Nextcloud using WebDAV etc, but it doesn't actually work properly (files do get stored on Nextcloud, but with strange filenames and no filetype extension e.g. if you upload a jpg it'll be missing a .jpg so even though the file is there and works Nextcloud wont generate a thumbnail for it)

(whereas obviously Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud play very nicely together given the former is an app of the latter)

Also, for small groups, discussing and editing a text together using Nextcloud Talk is very nice as you can open and edit the doc in the same window.

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates So far, user feedback has all been very positive - recommended!