Element/Matrix, plain old IRC
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Mattermost is a great alternative.
Second that. We run a self-hosted instance, set up via docker. Just works. About 30-60 users.
As an avid Slack user, having to use Teams at my latest job is torture. On the other hand, I'm part of a small community that also runs a self-hosted Mattermost instance, and let me say it is damned close to being exactly as slick and feature-packed as Slack is. I'm so sold on it.
They are open core, not open source.
Matrix and Element work. It has apps for desktop IOS and Android. Can have multiple channels for different topics. Not quite slack level of workspace management, but it's an option.
I haven't explored it enough to give firm advice, but Matrix has "spaces" that seem to collect rooms, which presents itself in the modern clients a lot like Slack would. And creating rooms isn't much work.
Mattermost also always seems like a good option, but self-hosting carries a maintenance cost. I also used to maintain a small program to stash Slack conversations over time (as a hedge against their limitations) and display/analyze them, but it would be an undertaking to make it work today with the current API.
At 30 people, buying a refurbished rackmount server is my recommendation.
They run anywhere from $250 to a couple thousand, but I'm running a media server and ebook/comic library server on an HPE DL360 Gen 9 with 64gb DDR4 RAM and dual 8-core Xeon processors, which I paid $450 for.
That will give you so many more options for your co-op.
For 30 people? A $10us VM at Digital Ocean would be more than sufficient.
My t2.small instance on AWS runs me about $40/month when you factor in elastic IP, backup snapshots, traffic, bursting, etc. I haven't used DO before, so I don't know what kind of overheads they get beyond the raw instance compute costs, but even at $10/month you'd have paid for the server in less than 4 years, (and just 1 year at $40/mo), and you're getting a MUCH beefier server.
To run an XMPP server you don't really need a beefy instance. 2 gigs of RAM, one core, 2TB of transfer per month (which I've yet to even touch given how much I use that server), 50 gigs of storage locally, a static IPv4 address, IPv6 addresses if I want them, snapshots, and enough traffic that I don't think I've even noticed it on my invoices.
That will give you so many more options for your co-op.
Sure, if they are only ever going to do text over XMPP, that's plenty. If they ever want to do more than that, VPS will mean more money, whereas a self-hosted server won't. Shared docs, video or music streaming, e-book library, etc will murder a small or medium instance on AWS if you've got 30 people using it at once. Music and video especially, obviously.
Co-ops generally want to minimize costs and outside reliance, and "scale up on hosted cloud stacks as-needed" is sort of the opposite of that philosophy.
Is it text only? xmpp should be lightweight and smooth sailing. prosody configured to never expire messages would give you a forever archive on the server. There are good mobile clients, plus web/pwa and native desktop clients.
Element, Zulip, or Mattermost should be options that'll work for your co-op's online discussions.
I haven't used it in years, but Rocket.Chat was super solid for me when I did. Only had about 5 users at the time, but it did the job well and let me tweak the CSS to my liking.
We use matrix with Element and set up our own video server so that we can do video meetings etc. All encrypted and self hosted.
I think xmpp is closest to a Slack replacment, second only to Mattermost. I think Mattermost does have a stronger commercial lean, so I wonder if it's just a matter of time till it goes closed-source to generate "more value".
I moved my family from Slack to RocketChat when Slack changed the free version to 90 day retention.
I found the UI was pretty similar. I absolutely hate Mattermost’s UI, and I didn’t think my non-techie family would do well with all the encryption prompts in Matrix/Element.
Maybe Revolt chat is something to consider too?
Signal might work for your needs
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