Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Matrix vs Other Protocols (XMPP, Signal, etc.)

  • Several commenters say XMPP feels simpler, more stable, and easier to self-host; others report Matrix is “rock solid” for their groups.
  • Some users left Matrix for Signal or DeltaChat for 1:1 encrypted chat, citing Matrix’s past failures around E2EE desync, slow sync, and painful data cleanup.
  • A number of people have abandoned Matrix entirely in favor of XMPP after years of running homeservers.

Self‑Hosting Difficulty & Server Implementations

  • Experiences range from “smooth for years” to “hardest system I’ve ever run.”
  • Synapse is widely seen as heavy on RAM, CPU, and storage; DBs in the tens of GB are common, especially with large federated rooms.
  • SQLite: some claim “will become corrupted,” others have multi‑year SQLite installs with no issues; project maintainers say SQLite was never meant for production and is being discouraged.
  • Postgres is the de facto recommendation; migrations (e.g., SQLite→Postgres, Dendrite→Synapse) have caused breakage for some.
  • Dendrite is widely described as a dead end: stalled maintenance, bugs, lack of migration path, and poor bridge/appservice support. Conduit and other lightweight homeservers get positive mentions.
  • ESS Community (Kubernetes deployment) and docker‑ansible playbooks are praised for easier setup, but k8s is seen as overkill for small instances.

Clients, Matrix 2.0, and Element X

  • Element Classic is in maintenance mode; Element X is positioned as the future but criticized as incomplete: missing or buggy calls, threads, and features, plus reliance on Matrix Authentication Service.
  • Some report Element X now stable and fast (sliding sync, improved encryption), others still see it as alpha‑quality.
  • Frequent rewrites (servers, clients, VoIP stack) are a recurring complaint; users feel the ecosystem never fully stabilizes.

Federation, Privacy, and Retention

  • Federation can be disabled; small private and LAN‑only homeservers work fine.
  • Concerns about attack surface, metadata leakage, immutable server‑side event history, and difficulty deleting media or enforcing retention.
  • Earlier media proxy behavior (serving remote media unauthenticated) scared some operators; said to be fixed but trust is damaged.
  • Debate over “right to be forgotten” vs inherent limits of federated, open protocols.

Admin Tooling, Moderation, and Governance

  • Lack of a simple, first‑party admin dashboard was called a strategic mistake; a new admin panel exists but is very recent and not packaged everywhere.
  • Moderation tools are often server‑side or bot‑based, creating friction for non‑technical community admins.
  • Several commenters link ecosystem instability to funding constraints and Element’s shifting technical bets; some worry about the split between open Synapse and commercial offerings.