this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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Hello,

I've been self hosting Nextcloud for the last half a year, and my family has been using Nextcloud Talk to communicate. However, as cool it is overall, we suffer from a lot of missed messages. I've been keeping an eye on (and contributing to) the Android app, but even with all the updates, it seems like they can't quite figure out the issue with notifications not appearing consistently. My wife is fed up, so I'm looking for alternatives.

It seems like Matrix is the next logical one to try, but the Android apps have pretty poor reviews. A lot of the self hosted messengers also seem to be more like Slack replacements, rather than focused on family & friend use.

Has anyone had a good experience with a self hosted messenger for family use?

Thanks!

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[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 20 hours ago

Matrix works well for me.

It's not out yet, but I'd keep an eye on Flatline. It's by the people who make Molly (Signal client fork—it's pretty good, been using it for years). Flatline is a Molly-compatible server implementation, i.e. so that you can host your own Signal server. Because generally if someone asked for a "reliable messenger for family use" I'd recommend Signal as a polished and reliable option, though not self-hostable unfortunately.