Our smartphones come with conversations. It's by far the best choice in our opinion.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2021
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Privacy
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I would recommend Quicksy for most people that I communicate with rather than Conversations. Whatsapp/Signal have demonstrated that phonebook contact discovery is quite effective in getting the network effect by easing the burden of sign-up and adding contacts.
Personally, I'm using Conversations, and then gauge by whether or not I'm likely to lose the interest of a friend by adding the extra step of signing up on a server and then manually adding contacts before I decide which of Conversations/Quicksy to recommend.
I wish there was an iOS Quicksy equivalent, all the iOS xmpp clients lack the polish of Conversations and the ease of sign-up of Quicksy. Unfortunately, for most of my friends on iOS I've resorted to using Signal until something better emerges.
I don't recommend Quicksy as I disagree with the phone-number use, but sure, it is Conversations made to work with phone-numbers, even by the same developer.
As for iOS... generally iOS should be avoided, but there are supposedly two relatively nice XMPP clients for it: https://siskin.im/ https://monal.im/ (I never owned a iOS device, so no idea how they hold up in praxis)
I also disagree with phone-number use, but there's a trade-off with what we want everyone to use and what we want to personally use. Phone-number based signup is more effective for most people to sign-up and it's not possible to compete with that no matter how much you explain why it's worse.
I agree with avoiding iOS, I wouldn't buy an Apple device, but I can't do anything about my friends and family who use Apple. I've found Monal to be better than Siskin for OMEMO and push-notifications (anecdotes from a friend on iOS who puts up with me insisting on using xmpp). That said Conversations is more feature complete and nicer.
Here is another list of XMPP servers: https://xmpp-servers.404.city/ or https://list.jabber.at/
For hosting yourself, Prosody or Ejabberd are recommended. The easiest way to host a Prosody server is using the Snikket preconfigured images. Or check out the guides here.
Edit: another good source (in German): https://www.freie-messenger.de/sys_xmpp/server/
I also like to mention Yunohost for people who might not be ready to jump that far into server admin but don't mind starting something basic (it comes with XMPP).
Been meaning to try and set this up on an old spare computer for a while. Might finally do it.
I absolutely love Conversations
I used XMPP before knowing signal, and this IS so difficult to make people migrate to signal that it will be impossible on xmpp
The problem I see with Conversations is that it's not as pretty as alternatives (Signal, Telegram, Element...) or other proprietary messaging apps. Normies are not going to be happy with that.
Edit: and I think it doesn't still have (video)call support, although correct me if I'm wrong.
It does have audio/video call support.
blabber.im, a fork of Conversations, is one of the most slick and beautiful apps I have ever used. Although I agree, FOSS apps are functionally focused instead of aesthetics.
I use Conversations, blabber.im and Dino and am sticking to them.