Modern XMPP project discussion - 2025-11-01

Why is Matrix so much more popular among people than XMPP, if Matrix is so incredibly slow?

I wanted to make my own messaging server for fun, and when I was scouring the internet I remembered about XMPP and decided to give it a try. It seems so much more faster and snappier, and the ecosystem is, from what I've heard, more mature and extensible

it is mostly a false impression you get from Matrix being more focussed on public chat.

and of course matrix spending much more on events and other promotional efforts

in total users it is probably not much different

(that said, both are rather niche and not much used)

I run a community that supports XMPP, IRC and Matrix, and without specific advertisement or push in one direction the user number are about equal between the three.

initially I also thought Matrix would be over-represented.

I wanna make a messaging server for a college project, would you recommend going with XMPP or Matrix? I really miss Matrix's Spaces on XMPP

hard to say. Spaces are somewhat work in progress for https://movim.eu but it will probably take a few more months for them to be ready.

maybe get a few people together and have them try the options first to see what they think?

there are also some nice non-federated chat server options like Stout (former Revolt), Zulip, Rocketchat and so on. For a small chat server for a university project they are probably also suitable.

The Discourse forums also include a workable chat option these days.

I actually forgot that Zulip existed. Is it mature?

I once made an account in it to chat about Clojure

yeah it is pretty solid, but more of an chat/email hybrid

UI wise, it doesn't use email as a protocol or so.

speaking of email, DeltaChat is also quite nice for small groups.

I want it to scale to 1000 users, so performance is rather important part here (I won't be able to afford a 12 core 32 GB system). So far XMPP seems to be the best option so far