A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol for email |
| SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol |
| SSO | Single Sign-On |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging |
[Thread #59 for this comm, first seen 4th Feb 2026, 08:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
You can try Delta Chat. It's self hosted, E2EE and they use SMTP and IMAP protocols, so it's compatible with any email account (not 100% real this, didn't work with tutamail or Proton mail)
Is XMPP not good enough ? Or GNU-Jami.
I tried Zulip for a small org. Used their hosted version since it's quite generous for nonprofits. I personally liked it, but I was very much in the minority. Most of our people didn't like it. I don't think anyone articulated very well why they didn't like it so it's hard for me to characterize it other than people bitched about the UI a lot. I personally think it works fine, just be ready for some pushback.
We also tried Mattermost, and the uptake seemed a little easier. If you're used to slack, discord, etc., most of them are pretty easy to transition to, but if you're dealing with people that never used a real time chat platform, all of them (even slack) are like pushing a rock uphill because people can be impressively resistant to sensible change.
This sounds like exactly my research arc over the last few months. I went with rocket because the 50 user limit is probably fine... Doesnt work with podman regardless of the docs.
Curious to see where you land
Nextcloud talk, but it's no small feat to setup properly
People suggest matrix but matrix really doesnt replace mattermost for an org.
mattermost is oriented towards org needs. It has boards, playbooks, better levels of access control. Admin panels etc.
We really need a sane Slack alternative that is at least fully free for self hosting.
Mattermost is licensed under the AGPL. How are they enforcing a 250 user limit?
Edit: the commercial version with additional features (e.g.: SSO) is limited. Obviously the open-source version is unlimited.
Might be worth reading this and the original github issue. It isn't actually agpl. They only grant access to the source code to build a compiled version which isn't freedom. And beyond that, some code is covered under a source available enterprise license which i think is where they would enforce their paywall
At the copyright owner, they are within their rights to release the source code under the AGPL, and also sell it under other licenses. Anyone is free to use the code under the AGPL. Nobody who releases code under an open-source license is obligated to provide binaries.
As the copyright owner, they are free to use the code along with other non-open-source code (e.g.: SSO integrations) to build a non-free product.
I feel like you didn't read the post or issue i linked, nor their license.txt and are instead just trying to talk past me.
I don't really care about this project or debating their intentionally ambiguous license structure. My point was that the grant of rights explicitly only grants AGPL access to create compiled versions of mattermost. That is not how FOSS licenses work and is incompatible with FOSS licenses because it lacks the "freedom" that even AGPL would typically grant.
You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways:
Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0, subject to the exceptions outlined in this policy; or
Under a commercial license available from Mattermost, Inc. by contacting commercial@mattermost.com
I'm not saying that people can't dual license or that they can't release their product in other non-free ways. That's not the issue here. The issue is that you are saying it's AGPL, and it's not--Not really. It's only AGPL to create a compiled version of mattermost.
IANAL. I originally interpreted the license.txt as: all of the source code is AGPL (see lines 234-235), some of the source is also Apache 2.0, and the binaries are MIT; plus a trademark notice and contact info for getting a commercial license. After rereading it, my only conclusion is that this is a dumpster fire of a license.txt, and can be reasonably read several different ways.
And, people have been asking them to clarify it and they just say, “no.”
They’re acting very suspiciously.
Agreed, very suspicious. I would feel safe assuming that I can use the code under AGPL, but I would hesitate to use it for anything other than personal hobby because it would not surprise me if they closed their github account and never released any more code.
Some drama on their licensing situation:
https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues/8886#issuecomment-3837091846
I keep seeing Zulip tossed around as an alternative, but I don't know what's up with their licencing. There's also Framateam, but I think that might just be Mattermost as a service.
Matrix would be great if it wasnt so user-hostile, but it is :-(
Matrix (Synapse with Element) can be self-hosted for free, though they have optional paid plans for enterprises. The main goal of Matrix is federation (connecting with other servers), though this can be turned off completely. This is probably the most "business" look/feel you can get fully FOSS, if that's what you're looking for.
XMPP has more clients/servers, and is more for the technically oriented end user. I can't really give recommendations here, as I haven't extensively used XMPP.
Spacebar (formerly Fosscord) is a Discord clone (API compatibility as a goal) that can be selfhosted.
Xmpp works great for 1:1 chats and small private groups, but there isn't really an enterprise team chat client for it. Recently some promising projects came up trying to change that, but they are still too new to be serious contenders for that usecase specifically. Maybe in 1-2 years the situation will be different.
Had to move a small team away from skype/teams quickly so renting dedicated matrix hosting in Europe and not federating the instance has been working great, except for some issues like group calls over jitsi not working properly and users reluctant to learn more odd interfaces.
Using matrix through element.io on ocassion.
It's great.
Of the ones I've tried that are fully open-source is the best ons regarding UX functionality.
For example, Matrix is a UX nightmare, with many different clients implementing different features, or having issues if a non-default login mode is used, ending in people getting locked out after the browser logged them out because they forgot to copy a key when they were logged in.
Others like rocketchat are opencore like matter most, which means they can do the switcheroo.
The things I would care the most when checking this kind of service are:
On Matrix, as long as you have your username and password, it’s not possible to get “locked out” due to not having your keys. In fact, your keys are only necessary if you plan to participate in encrypted chats, in which case it’s obvious that losing your key will mean losing access to old messages. However, you will still be able to receive new messages by generating a new key.
Matrix is great
A Matrix server is a good solution. You can disable federation if you would rather not talk to other instances and have a similar experience to Mattermost, Slack, etc.
If you dislike the Matrix protocol, an XMPP server would work exactly the same way.
NextCloud Chat could also be a viable solution for internal chat.
Out of curiosity would matrix work for you?
There is also Nextcloud Talk, but it can be a bit overwhelming to set up (needs the high-performance backend for video and stuff). But, it's entirely self-hosted and has no user cap as far as I am aware.
I'm not sure what the performance would look like for hundreds of users
Have you checked out rocketchat or stoat? 🙏
Nothing (well maaaaaaybe IRC) beats XMPP / Jabber when it comes to installing for small institutional needs. There are pretty good servers around, such as Prosody.
The servers are great, but the currently available clients are only great for non-corporate usecases IMHO.
Yep. I tried xmmp over matrix and while the setup was relatively solid and straightforward to configure the clients and lack of central history were too much of a step back so I went back to matrix.
You must have used a very outdated client (like Pidgin) because history is syncronized via the server reliably since 10+ years on xmpp with clients that support the MAM standard.