cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/26910708
My small company (less than 30 employees) has been using Skype for internal group meetings and messaging. Since it’s closing, we’re looking for alternatives.
I think few people in the company are privacy minded (one of the higher ups had to get scolded to stop using some random AI to listen to all his meetings and write summaries), so we need something with a low barrier to entry.
We have basically no IT department, so self hosting would be a challenge. We do self host a redmine server via docker, and we have to connect to it via VPN when we’re off-site (we have several full time remote employees).
Our feature requirements are: Group and individual messaging Screen sharing Meetings up to 2 hours Inexpensive Meetings with up to 10 participants Windows (some people use Skype from their phones also, but not a requirement) Minimal friction to setup and use Minimal bugs (mature)
Some of the ideas floated: Teams Discord Google Meet Signal Telegram Jami
I really don’t think we could pull off Matrix, but am I wrong? Which of these ideas bothers you the least? Is there something else I’m overlooking?
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Thanks for all your advice. Here’s a report on my experiences for anybody that may have a similar question. I demo’d Zulip with Jitsi, Jami, and Nextcloud Talk today.
I’ve actually used Signal desktop for years, and love it, but don’t really want to mix work with personal, and if I didn’t already use it, I’d squirm about the required mobile app on my personal phone. Telegram might be a little easier that way-- I don’t think you have to have an app to make an account, just a phone number.
I liked Zulip, but I didn’t like Jitsi. It required a google account or a github account to host a meeting, it ran in browser instead of embedded in the Zulip app somehow, and the Jitsi desktop app seemed to be from 2003.
Jami was ok. I was able to set it up pretty easily, but I didn’t know if others in the org can handle that it’s P2P so you can’t leave messages for others off hours. Also there seemed to be a lot of complaints about its reliability in its own forum.
NextCloud talk on the free servers didn’t really work. I could get voice and text, but screen sharing just errored. I think I’d have to set up a TURN server or something like that. So if that requires hosting anyway, might as well do Matrix. Also the free servers were really slow.
So next test for me is Matrix. Is there a way I can try it out for free to see if I can recommend it to the rest of the company? Without spending hours on it? I’ve probably wasted more company time on this project than I would’ve saved in subscriptions.
If you are not looking to selfhost, how about a Matrix provider?
For example, etke.cc has offers from 15 USD/month. There are plenty of options, see etke.cc/order
I am not affiliated with them, I just happen to have heard of them because they are well-known and have an excellent reputation. There are others. See e.g. matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting
The software itself is free for less than 50 employees. Has all the features you need. You can very easily host it for cheap (From $4.0/month ) on http://pikapods.com/apps#chat
Mattermost, wire, jitsi, Zulip
Less than 30? Self-host an Ejabberd server on an old desktop under some desk for private message & multiuser chats + Jitsi which handshakes over the same protocol as the chats, XMPP. If you need some unified UI for everyone & a bit of posts, Movim can also sit on top of the XMPP server. If need need some low-latency, low-resource audio chat, let folks idle in a Murmur server.
Matrix uses way too many resources & is way too slow/inefficient at the protocol level.
Zulip or Mattermost if you want basically a free (as in freedom) and open source alternative to Teams and slack But as you mention self-hosting isn’t really an option it can become expensive.
Maybe a mix of Signal and Jitsi Meet (there is several public free instances) if you want a good balance between privacy, price and efficiency
Maybe look at the kSuite from Infomaniak it’s not the best but might be a good balance too for your team.
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Mumble is great for audio chat, but I would not wish its text chat on everyone. For an audio application it is light on your resources, but not good enough to leave on perpetually since it will keep checking the mics which makes it great for idling in when you want to audio chat, but not good if you don’t want that noise. I run & use my server regularly, but I log out when I need to focus or to save battery. I think it works better as an auxiliary place to chill or for meetings & is better paired with a different application for text chat & keeping on more or less always (where that other chat probably shouldn’t be Matrix—not just for installation but the resources required to run it). You will also get iOS folks crying there aren’t any great ports since it costs money to be on the Apple Store, FOSS doesn’t have deep pockets, & GPL is banned.
I don’t see privacy listed in your requirements so I’m not sure why you’ve posted here. Self hosting would be necessary for that in any case.
Teams would probably be the best option given your requirements. It does everything, and for the most part it just works. Sometimes it doesn’t, but when that happens, you’ve got entire departments at Microsoft working to fix it, as opposed to when a local service you’re at the mercy of the one guy who knows a bit about computers (or worse, his nephew).
