Fluxer (more like discord) or Matrix
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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For one to one chats and the occasional group chat? XMPP is pretty awesome and has lots of good clients (Conversations on Android, Monal on iDevices, Dino, Gajim, etc. on Linux)
If you want something closer to Discord and host public communities or very large chatrooms, Matrix is very good. You can self-host it with Continuwuity, and there are lots of clients too (Cinny, FluffyChat, Element, Fractal, NeoChat, etc.)
If you just need voice chat, Mumble is simple and works well.
I second XMPP. Conversations is great and its really easy to host your own prosody server.
Matrix
but what good client that isnt designed for just businesses
I'd say Element is the one to go for. A list of clients is available here:
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
Personally I like Sable, it feels closer to Discord, has call support, and "just works"
services:
sable:
image: git.sable.moe/sableclient/sable-next:latest
ports:
- '127.0.0.1:8080:8080'
volumes:
- ./config.json:/app/config.json:ro
restart: unless-stopped
Looks pretty simple to selfhost the web client too
https://github.com/SableClient/sable-next/blob/main/Caddyfile
Cinny is also still a very good option! Especially if non-techy people are gonna be using it, as its UI is more stable (as in, changes less)
Seconding Sable.
Cinny is an awesome desktop client, as is Element, Fractal (GNOME, no spaces support though) and NeoChat (KDE)
For mobile, I personally prefer FluffyChat, but there's other options too.
I think the clients are all better lately. For Android I prefer Schildi Chat Next. For most everything else we use my self hosted Cinny web app. My only iPhone user likes elementX. Fluffy Chat is solid for messaging only, but I did not like that it can't do the voice and video calls. They may have added that by now, I'm not an expert.
Matrix, and I recommend selfhosting Continuwuity as it is lightweight and easy to spin up. Your other option could be XMPP with Snikket or proper Prosody.
Though do you have any particular features you wanna bring over from Facebook Messenger?
Continuwuity is so easy the setup and maintain. If you want to self host a matrix server, I couldn't recommend this enough.
Because it hasn't been mentioned:
IRC
Sometime also mentioned SimpleX, which I'm looking into myself, but have no experience currently.
I love IRC but it's absolutely not usabale for non-tech people
There is quite a bit of friction in the setup. After that, it's smooth.
Honestly no.
How do you join a channel? How to start private message? How to setup e2ee? How do I recieve messages when I'm offline (bouncer)? how do I send files/images/video? There's lots of things to learn, understand and setup
You must be the first person I’ve heard that actually selfhosts a delta chat server
Since it is chatmail based, it isn’t hard https://chatmail.at/relays
You just linked to a list of relays
here is the correct link: https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/getting_started.html#minimal-requirements-and-prerequisites
Are you asking just for general self-hosted messengers? Why did you mention Facebook specifically?
Matrix and element clients
simplex
The smp and xftp servers look pretty simple to get running with docker compose.
I tried a bunch. Right now I'm running Snikket (xmpp) and it's been very reliable.
Pidgin, maybe. I like it.
Edit: Oops, I might have misread/misunderstood what you were asking. If you're asking about server software, I'd suggest XMPP :)
Though I know Matrix is very popular (as shown by people others suggesting it)
Man, I haven't used pidgin in almost 20 years. Throwback, or whatever the kids say these days.
Man I remember using Pidgin for ICQ!