| > self-hosting an XMPP server isn't something you can just install and have it work For basic needs ala IRC it should just work out of the box by defining a virtualhost. For respect of advanced features as defined in the XMPP Compliance Suites, it'll need a few more settings but there's good guides: prosody: https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server... ejabberd: https://www.process-one.net/blog/ejabberd-xmpp-server-useful... All in all it should take a novice (who has some experience of sysadmin, can deal with DNS records, firewall, etc) a few hours to setup to their taste... Or you could go with Snikket, a XMPP distribution, to have everything pre-configured in a docker container. > XMPP clients on iOS were unusable Sorry I don't know about iOS mostly because my acquaintances can't afford Apple devices and/or are not interested in a walled garden where a private company owns all your computations. Though i heard similar stories as yours, but there is progress with Siskin, with some development (eg. OMEMO groupchats) being funded by the Snikket project. > notifications sometimes don't work This may have to do with your OS settings. I don't know how iOS handles low power mode but i know for sure some Android distros restrict network queries (apart from the privileged, centralized push notifications service) and there's settings to uncheck for that. > in a business situation In a business situation you might find the resources to implement the features you need or pay someone to do it. I understand it may not be the answer you expect, but that's how free-software ecosystems move forward. In this regard, XMPP is not named "eXtensible" without reason. > it needs to work well enough across iOS/Android/browser to not drive people away Sure. I think that's the goal for everyone. If there's something that doesn't "work well enough" then it's a bug and should be reported then fixed. |
Everything here sounds to me like "with a year or two of improvements, non-technical users might not run away screaming". I would love to use a federated chat protocol, but the reality is that XMPP isn't in the same league as other chat programs right now from a feature perspective, ease of installation, client availability, or user friendliness standpoint.
My company tried it, hard, for about 3 weeks. I paid something like $2000 in consultant and employee time to do that test. I was willing to deal with it because it was literally the only option in our case (we needed to avoid google push notifications). Once we realized we could make Zulip work by routing push notifications through a separate service we switched and almost everything about Zulip works smoother and with more useful features. None of these replies are convincing me that XMPP would work any better if I just knew more about how to install it right, etc. Again, I would love to use an open, federated chat protocol, but XMPP isn't useful right now in the ways I need it to be.