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?
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.
You can always sign up for the default matrix server and try it out there.
Personally, I think the video and screen sharing runs slow and janky, but it might be the closest thing to Teams or Slack especially if everyone is on the same network.