I’ve had matrix and element set up on my personal domain for a while, but I’ve only used them for evaluation so far. The system and network resources used are HUGE…

I’ve been setting up movim and a seperate xmpp server for a little while, and I have some initial opinions:

• xmpp (prosody) appears to be much better optimised than matrix (synapse)
• matrix and element are much easier to set up
• movim is a huge PITA to deploy yourself (especially in a container… you’re basically on your own at the moment)
• xmpp requires tcp ports and ssl certs that should be easy to set up… unless you’re on a cgnat network. Matrix can be set up through a cloudflare tunnel with https no problem, but xmpp requires some networking elbow grease.
• the mandatory certificates probably make the xmpp network safer?
• Even with the mautrix discord bridge copying the exact layout of discord channels into element, movim seems more familiar to me. I haven’t really had enough time to evaluate movim, but it seems like it’s trying to appeal to discord users, and element is clearly not. Element feels like a well funded enterprise tool that is doing its own thing.
• commet (with 2 m’s) chat is a very faithful discord clone for matrix, but it’s very barebones.

Either way, I am gonna deploy both and let my friends/discord channel users decide what works best.

I’m rooting for xmpp at the moment, but I will be happy with anything that is self hosted, encrypted and federated.

Hopefully I don’t end up having to maintain both protocols with a bridge!