Wolfgang's Channel

Matrix is dead. Long live Mattermost!

Added 2023-04-05 08:50:28 +0000 UTC

In an effort to move our Patreon community away from Discord (for a plethora of reasons), I'd created a Matrix server over at https://matrix.notthebe.ee/. However, after a month of using it, I and other community members decided to try out another open-source community platform – Mattermost.

Why?

Matrix is an amazing software product with one big flaw – all clients suck, each in its unique way.

There are dozens of Matrix clients, each one with their own advantages and disadvantages, and neither client is good at everything. Case in point – Element is cross-platform, but has a subjectively confusing interface and doesn't support custom emojis. Cinny, however, does support custom emojis, but only comes as a web app and doesn't support voice calls. And then there are multiple other clients, which also do some stuff well, and completely fall flat when it comes to other stuff – SchildiChat, FluffyChat, and so on.

At the end of the day, it basically means that you have to run at least two client apps in order to get the full feature set.

Why Mattermost?

Mattermost is an open-source alternative to Slack. It's definitely more enterprise/business-focused, but also has multiple advantages over Matrix/Element.

Most importantly – it has one cross-platform client that doesn't suck, and supports both custom emojis and voice calls.

Current known limitations: