Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives
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Anyone aware of any apps built using https://swellrt.org ?
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@robi How is swellrt.org relevant to RocketChat?
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@foliovision it's an alternative
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Doesn't look like much of an alternative to me.
I must say the link spam to your paid healing business and buy me a coffee and paypal me seems a bit weird. You're a regular member so it's not up to me to judge.
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@foliovision said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
Doesn't look like much of an alternative to me.
Then you must not be a developer or someone who envisions investing in developing a chat solution for your needs.
Thanks for the screenie, those stats look great!
Although I prefer dark mode.
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@robi said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
someone who envisions investing in developing a chat solution for your needs.
No I don't want to invest in developing a chat solution. I'd like to replace RocketChat with a reliable and perhaps less-featured open source alternative. I would definitely be up to contribute to such a project (donation) and some code fixes where we find rough edges, if the app is mostly PHP/JS.
What really bothers me about open source projects like RocketChat is when they use AWS infrastructure for their paid hosting. We seek and support non-US jurisdiction open source apps as we would like to retain our privacy, not have it secretly undermined by tying directly back into big data. I.e. at one point we were subscribers to the paid service but the AWS infrastructure annoyed us enough along with the constantly changing prices and business model to leave.
Ah well, at least RocketChat's weirdness prompted me to look hard enough to find Cloudron, and we now run about five of nine core services on open source software. We've loved no more mandatory updates (except with RocketChat, which really should be locked down on the last privacy friendly version with just security fixes). We would be very happy to look at something simpler. NextCloud alas is not it. There's just too many moving parts and updates and creaky joints there, it almost requires a full-time admin.
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To pile in on Rocket.chat, I read recently, but didn't take time to investigate, that they are also restricting numbers to 20. Users in a call, something like that.
When I was looking at Rocket.Chat a while ago, I compared it against Zulip, and found Zulip (and particularly their nice developers) to be the winner.
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1220/zulip-powerful-open-source-group-chat?_=1701894962066
The call quality on Nextcloud is excellent. Thanks for recommending that earlier.
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@foliovision Happily moved from RocketChat to Nextcloud Talk, been fast, reliable, well-liked by all users, and the least admin of any system I know. Don't know what your expectations are from FOSS, but there's some real-world experience with a few hundred users to include in your consideration.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn Marcus, I noticed your crowing about NextCloud talk higher in the thread. It caught my eye. My own experience with NextCloud file sharing and address sync has been painful enough over the course of years (partly Apple's fault) that I'm not keen to rely more on NextCloud. It's been a high maintenance slog. Probably for hundreds of users it's worth it but certainly not for half a dozen users.
To be honest, until relatively recently our RocketChat experience has been much better. We were early users and really loved this app, it's just become so community unfriendly.
@LoudLemur I'll take a look at Zulip. Thanks for the suggestion.
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@girish Yes mainly. It just seemed too complicated for me to sign off as GDPR compliant for our org.
Some or all of these criticisms may be valid
https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-matrix.org/blob/master/part2/README.mdOr maybe not, I didn't have the time or inclination to work it out and just went with Mattermost instead
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@Sam_uk We looked at Mattermost at the time we first considered RocketChat, many years ago. There were some issues then (about five years ago). What are the limitations of Mattermost in 2023?
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For anyone who is reading along, Zulip pricing (
if one decides to host with them and not on Cloudron– oops there is no Cloudron version) is per user at about $7/month. We strongly dislike per user pricing (even if it would often be in our favour these days) as it discourages employing people part-time or giving the full team access to tools. We are not looking for another package to manage ourselves (we do manage our own FreeScout and use it intensively enough to make doing so worthwhile, plus it gets FreeScout on the our .com domain rather than the .org) so we are really looking at what chat applications is in the Cloudron repository.- RocketChat is great but gradually squeezing out open source and has privacy issues.
- Mastodon is overkill (we're not trying to build an international open communication platform or federate)
- Matrix seems too complicated
- TeamSpeak seems intriguing but more focused on VOIP than we need
- Element could work but we are unfamiliar with it
- The Lounge – IRC (we happily used vanilla XMPP for years) seems like a step backwards (poor file handling) but is a barebones option which could suit us
- Mattermost – the category of application for which we are looking, lost out the sweepstakes to RocketChat years ago as perhaps Mattermost was not on Cloudron back then and there were some severe limitations to the open source version.
This post is not advocating for Zulip or adding yet more chat applications to the already overburdened Cloudron team. It's just exploring what the best option might be out of what is there already. Element looks a lot like RocketChat/Zulip. Does anybody out there have feedback on how it is to run Element on Cloudron and/or in production?
We'd be giving up the option of livechat on our website but the RocketChat livechat is not great and we're not using it much this year. (RocketChat calls live chat Omnichannel).
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https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1220/zulip-powerful-open-source-group-chat?_=1702033809412
On Cloudron, one would install matrix as the server and then element as a client which users could interface with using their web-browser. There is also an option to download a desktop element client. Element might be a bit complex looking to those less familiar with computers.
I hope that Cloudron supports XMPP by offering ejabberd.
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/2486/ejabberd-robust-scalable-and-extensible-realtime-server-using-xmpp-mqtt-and-sip?_=1702033809416 -
Thanks for the info @LoudLemur. You said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
On Cloudron, one would install matrix as the server and then element as a client which users could interface with using their web-browser.
There's nothing on the Cloudron Element info page to indicate dependency on an external Matrix server. It looks like Element would run freestanding. If this is not the case, the Cloudron info page for Element should probably show that dependency.
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Element isn't a dependency, but is one of the front-end options for matrix, and Cloudron supports it.
The cloudron documentation links to this page:
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/ -
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@LoudLemur said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
Element isn't a dependency
You have reversed what I asked. My question is whether Matrix is a dependency for Element. I.e. is Element self-sufficient or does it require a Matrix server (which we probably don't need). I am against additional levels of complexity. Commercial software these days (even and especially the OS underneath) are ridiculously overcomplicated and open source is slowly following in its footsteps down what looks like the wrong path. I'm looking for simplicity in our chat application. Ideally it would be written in PHP/JS/CSS so we could improve it where we find rough edges.
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@foliovision said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
is Element self-sufficient or does it require a Matrix server
It requires a Matrix server. Not necessarily your own though. Presumably you could use it to log into any Matrix account. But it's not a standalone thing. It's a Matrix client.
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Without prior notice (?) I have noticed that one of my rocket.chat instances is in a
Pro trialstatus.
If you log in as an administrator and go to the workspace/subscription page (https://chat.example.org/admin/subscription), there is a link to
Contact sales to finish your purchase and avoid downgrade consequences.https://docs.rocket.chat/resources/frequently-asked-questions/license-faqs/downgrade-behaviorI have no problem with FLOSS communities looking for ways to raise money. But that feels wrong. On so many levels.
Thank you for 49 replies to my first post from mid-2022.
In a more general way: What is a chat? Which 'problem' should be solved by a chat tool?
For me, chat is fluid. There is no need for permanent information. It's more of a tool that replaces a thread full of nonsensical emails. Fire and forget. And I have no problem with all messages being automatically deleted after (say) 30 days.
For some of my teammates, it's a repository for information. They try to find the right thread in the chat where they discussed something without transferring the result of the discussion to other tools like an issue in Git or a wiki page. But the internal search in rocket.chat is far from being useful.
Others complained about rocket.chat because they were never informed about new messages on their smartphone.
I'll add these wishes to a short list. What should a "perfect" chat do (besides standards like groups, threads, channels, bla ...)?
- (reliable) Notifications on a mobile device
- a "smart" search
Should we see a chat tool as something like a messenger? Or an alternative to e-mail? Perhaps as a replacement for the telephone?
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@luckow said in Perhaps it is time to think about alternatives:
Should we see a chat tool as something like a messenger? Or an alternative to e-mail? Perhaps as a replacement for the telephone?
That's the way it'll end up whether intentional or not. You have 1000's of different ways/apps to communicate now. Each app wants to stand out somehow. Solution? Offer a feature no-one else has. Chatwoot (a live chat app) has built-in email capability. Beeper (latest hot app) offers a ton of bridges to merge all these chats. Everyone is running to "federate" things. We had the telephone, one system, all "federated". I can call anyone in the world, but it was too centralized, too controlled, so we embraced tech and the plethora of "secure" apps (signal, matrix, etc.). Now, we're trying to federate all those apps again. The real question is, WHY? It's simple, the human mind will create problems when there are none. We get bored and probably will go insane if we have no problems in our lives.
