In order to answer this question it is important to understand the fundamental difference between XMPP and Matrix.
XMPP was invented at a time, where communicating online meant sending a message from one device to another.
However, the modern expectations for messaging apps are much more than that. Sending media, using multiple devices, deleting messages, editing messages, read receipts, notifications when typing, group chats, threads, and even managing communities are all things a modern messenger app should be able to do.
The fundamental operating principle has shifted from mere message passing to synchronising a common state between all participants. If you think about it, nowadays, you're not chatting anymore. You're essentially collaboratively editing a shared chat history file, where the most common action is to add a message; usually at the bottom.
This is what Matrix is at its core. It's a protocol to synchronise state, and that's part of why Matrix is so complex and hard to administrate. I personally think its the better base for the future of communication than XMPP, and I havent even mentioned encryption yet.
Moving on to the practical part: Running a Matrix Synapse server is quite a commitment, but if all you want is talk to friends and family, then there are simpler options. Conduit and Dendrite are a bit easier to set up, and of course there are plenty of public homeservers you could sign up with.
If you do commit to running Synapse however, you have the option to install bridges to almost any other messaging service. This way, your friends and family can keep using what they're used to (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Facebook, ...), and you just use one single Matrix client to talk to all of them.
> XMPP was invented at a time, where communicating online meant sending a message from one device to another. However, the modern expectations for messaging apps are much more than that. Sending media, using multiple devices, deleting messages, editing messages, read receipts, notifications when typing, group chats, threads, and even managing communities are all things a modern messenger app should be able to do.
XMPP provides all of these features and manages to keep up with commercial products really well. Everything Slack or Discord offer is there in the XMPP protocol. And if it wasn't, it could be relatively easily added, thanks to it being extensible.
However, navigating the protocol and software supporting it requires a little bit of know-how. If the OP is interested in building a product incorporating instant messaging and the satellite features, I'd suggest partnering up with somebody with this know-how. Scalable servers would be MongooseIM or ejabberd, polished clients are Conversations or Movim.
If it's a question about which protocol to use for a homeserver, then maybe something focused on ease of setup would work best, like Prosody.
> The fundamental operating principle has shifted from mere message passing to synchronising a common state between all participants.
So it should all be based on blockchain, shouldn't it? ;)
I was an xmpp user back in the early 2000s and hosted a few instances myself. I think it would be an interesting experiment to leave xml behind and start using something like yaml to reduce message overhead. Never got far enough to implement it myself, though.
For those who still like the classic style of messengers, Psi [1] offers an old-school, extremely customisable interface, and is still actively maintained. It integrates nicely with all the desktop platforms as well.
Kinda. The normal version hasn’t seen a release in 4 years, only the experimental psi+ version is maintained, and it is unclear which features it actually supports as all (at least in the wiki in English) information is heavily outdated.
Modern XMPP clients have all of those: Sending media, using multiple devices, deleting messages, editing messages, read receipts, notifications when typing, group chats.
A lot of the features you mention were already there in XMPP 20 years ago. I've lost track of the standard a long time ago but I assume the rest have been added through extensions.
Synapse isn't as heavy as it used to be.
It's quite lite and very stable, I would pick it over any other server, matrix has issues as it is, you don't want to add compatibility issues to the mix.
Maybe it’s gotten a ton better but a couple years back setting up and managing the whole stack had a “shitty on purpose so you pay for hosting” vibe. I noped out in a hurry—and I’ve built and managed some comms-related stuff that ought to be an order of magnitude more fiddly than just running a Matrix server.
Dealing with stuff like running a state compressor regularly, manually removing records it bails on. Also having fast enough resources to handle situations like someone joining the Matrix HQ channel (it's the biggest one) and pulling in like 70GB of database bloat. I hit a bug a month or two back where sliding-sync (the new protocol Element X uses) was causing huge amounts of database bloat, they fixed it but my instance was running something like 200GB on a server with less than 10 people.
EDIT: I run it on a hetzner dedi, I have run it on Apple fusion drives in the past and consumer SSD's and it was a terrible time. Need high IOPS so things don't grind to a halt on intensive db operations (like joining HQ channel lol)
I should have omitted the "I found it fairly easily to set it up with a domain of my own." part, because I do like the answers to the question, those are the sort of answers I was hoping for, so thank you.
the matrix server where i have my account, run by a small tech community with one admin recently had to switch from a blacklist to a whitelist approach in order to curb the amount of fake accounts and spam they were getting. as a side effect since that change i had to bother the admin multiple times because one of the groups i was participating in was not reachable. the amount of work the admin has in order to keep the server im shape is much more than i would be willing to tolerate.
on top of that not a month goes by where something doesn't break.
a security conscious friend who joined matrix because of me (well, he was interested before, but i finally gave him a reason)
just deleted his matrix clients in disgust after some messages randomly could not be decrypted.
i suspect that there is still a problem on the server i am using, therefore more potential work for its already overworked admin.
XMPP was invented at a time, where communicating online meant sending a message from one device to another.
However, the modern expectations for messaging apps are much more than that. Sending media, using multiple devices, deleting messages, editing messages, read receipts, notifications when typing, group chats, threads, and even managing communities are all things a modern messenger app should be able to do. The fundamental operating principle has shifted from mere message passing to synchronising a common state between all participants. If you think about it, nowadays, you're not chatting anymore. You're essentially collaboratively editing a shared chat history file, where the most common action is to add a message; usually at the bottom.
This is what Matrix is at its core. It's a protocol to synchronise state, and that's part of why Matrix is so complex and hard to administrate. I personally think its the better base for the future of communication than XMPP, and I havent even mentioned encryption yet.
Moving on to the practical part: Running a Matrix Synapse server is quite a commitment, but if all you want is talk to friends and family, then there are simpler options. Conduit and Dendrite are a bit easier to set up, and of course there are plenty of public homeservers you could sign up with.
If you do commit to running Synapse however, you have the option to install bridges to almost any other messaging service. This way, your friends and family can keep using what they're used to (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Facebook, ...), and you just use one single Matrix client to talk to all of them.
That's what I do.