Suffers from the centralised model, as do Signal, Threema, etc. Jabber/XMPP and Matrix are the only ones I know of which support federation.
aTalk https://atalk.sytes.net/atalk/ is little known but should be mentioned. Not available for Apple though
Another Jabber/XMPP client. Not sure what its capabilities are though. Does it support OMEMO, voice & video calling?
yes it does. Worth a try?
Definitely. Once I’ve figured out how to add voice & video to my server. 
Edit: I just created an account on another server to try aTalk. Conclusions: a bit buggy and has a UI that would be much too confusing for non-technical folk trying to escape from whatsapp. One to watch though.
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@Vaughan
Many years ago duckduckgo had a free xmpp server i had got some family members to install Jitsi for windows and we used to talk on pc, of course was years ago but was able to do webcam, desktop sharing video, text and voice. I dont know how secure it was back in those days but was fun to use.
As for conversations IM messenger i had a look at their site and requires a small fee for the app to use their server comes with an annual fee of 8 Euro after a 6 month trial period.
I realize you can use your own server to avoid this fee, so i decided to download conversations IM from the /e/ app store and try it. (btw i went to f-droid first and the download failed).
So i wanted to try conversations and installed it, then to avoid the fees, i signed up elsewhere registering for an free xmmp account at 5july.org which supports omemo encryption. I then did the same for my PC, installed pidgin, installed lurch plugins which give it omemo encryption. etc ( probably pidgin is the wrong one to install for this test but it was the 1st one i found in a quick search)
Anyways when i run conversations IM i dont see any option to call or video chat, i am guessing the one they sell on goolag play store is a different client for which to do voice and video? anyways, couldnt figure it out to try/ test. … and if a friend or family member uses an iphone, i would have to research an xmpp client for them that does calls videos etc. The issue with family members is they may not be too techy, they want to install it and use right away I live far away from them so know i can try to explain how to set it up but i dont own an iphone so when they hit the first hurdle encountered they will giveup and continue using whatsapp oh no!
@maestr0
Thanks for pointing out Threema now does video calls, i had not used it, the wikipedia page had no mention of video calls, but see that they have indeed recently implemented video calls out of beta 2 months ago.
@ebob
As for wire theres a bit of a scandal going on. See harvey186`s post called wire is dead. Edward Snowden tweeted about Wire when it got sold “This is a grim turn for a once-promising app” Wire had moved its holding company to the United States in February 2019, without disclosing this until November 2019. Due to the extensive online surveillance activities of the United States government, many people concerned with protecting their privacy argue against trusting any service that is based in the USA. This techcrunch article maybe of interest,.
I use Threema Messenger and happy with it! Video Calls are in Beta Phase.
I got Conversations from F-droid so maybe a temporary problem or device specific. The voice and video call buttons appear in the chat once established and both users are added to contacts and registered for presence updates. Bear in mind that not all servers support these options.
I tried Riot before, because it lookes modern (they do a good job in PR) and I saw it mentioned in many dicussions about messengers on the internet. But I would not recommend that to anybody. The Android experience was just terrible (on my Linux machine everything was working fine though).
But I can definitely recommend Conversations used with a proper configured server. I use it now for more than one month and it is just working like a charm! Also audio and video-calls (which I nearly use everyday). Just keep in mind, that the selected XMPP-server is crucial for a smooth experience. Check the server before account creation at
Wire is my choice too for today. It’s easy to setup and use; doesn’t need your phone number to sign-in; encrypted; open-sourced; provides voice and video calls; has no third-party trackers inside the apk; centralized (so you and your contact don’t need to be online at the same time to exchange messages). There are some questions regarding ownership, but for now it seems the good choice to me.
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I read about rocket chat. But no time so far to set up my own Server. They offer their Servers AS well, but i did not want to use them.
@Griepen
I have been looking at the rocket chat website since you posted it, seems an interesting open source project with the ability to host on your own server. I tried to read their privacy section but seems that they have intermingled what their web page is doing with their app, so seems a bit confusing.
They say they wont sell your data, however they admit they would be very happy that if they are bought up by some business aquisition or merger they will happilly transfer the data they have collected about you to them which i find a bit of a contradiction. it also says they may be required to disclose your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities.
I am not 100% sure as like i said they seem to have mixed information mingling what they do with their website data collection and the app. It may well be a great app but it does seem they collect some kind of personal data which they could use to identify you. If you had a personal server it maybe different? their default servers are located in US and Europe, which they say you can choose which u prefer on installation.
I tried to see if there were any other online security privacy related reviews about rocket chat but was unable to find much. perhaps another forum member can shed some light on their practices.
@tial
thxs for sharing the xmmp complaince tester, useful, i like the Randomly suggested compliant servers underneath their search bar, i guessing those ones it suggests would be capable of video,audio. I may give it a try register a username with one of them to try conversations again.
“and if a friend or family member uses an iphone, i would have to research an xmpp client for them that does calls videos etc. The issue with family members is they may not be too techy, they want to install it and use right away I live far away from them so know i can try to explain how to set it up but i dont own an iphone so when they hit the first hurdle encountered they will giveup and continue using whatsapp oh no!”
This is the bottom line. In the original post it says “All in One voice, text, video & ability to send file attachments” - I’d add one more aspect: It should be cross-platform (and easy to use).
The truth is that WhatsApp is easy to use. Signal is good in this respect, maybe Wire too. But regular users won’t fiddle with Monal, ChatSecure or Siskin on an iPhone (and it has no call feature yet, desktop call does not work either, not with pidgin, not with gajim).
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Weird, @tial . I’ve been using it for months and my experience is quite good. I use it on a Motorola G 2014 (with /e/), a Samsung SIII (with Lineage OS), both Android 7.12, and on a Samsung A10 (original Android).
The server is controlled by me (self hosted) and my video calls go thru my own Jitsi Server.
If it wouldn’t be too much trouble I would like to hear more about the problems you encountered. 
I must add that I once used Conversations and is really a very good app.
@kalman
Crossplatform is of course the ideal as most folks are still using iphone. I was excited about rocket chat as it it is crossplatform so thought to investigate that one, but didnt like their privacy policy.
As for Xmpp it is widely used protocol and i dont have enough knowledge about iphones to dismiss it entirlely but im sure there must be a good privacy app for iphones that can do xmpp voice and video, was hoping a forum member may know a good xmpp one for the iphone…
Once you find a good xmpp server with the right protocols, setting up the xmpp client should be very easy…
Tho yes crossplatfrom is very important indeed. 
@freedapeoples : actually @kalman is right with his statement about iOS and desktop clients afaik. Just using it for writing is fine, but the more advanced things (e.g. calls) are still work in progress for non android devices. So if you have alot of iphone-using friends, you will not make them happy with the available apps. If that is no problem or if you can wait fore some proper iOS app, go for xmpp. For Android it is the the best thing you could choose (in my opinion). And I am not related to that XMPP community at all. I just tried to find the best fit for me for some time too, and ended up with conversations. And I am really happy.
@facb69: well, dont know where to start. I guess i finally gave up because of many (small) problems not stopping to occur, and because i came to the conclusion, that I don’t like there general concept in comparison to XMPP.
I tried with 4 different people with different devices (3x android, 1x iOS) for more than one month exclusivly (so no other messengers with these people in that time). And all of us just had enough of it after that. Some examples: messages where not delivered instantly but with (sometimes huge) delays. That was dependent on the load of the involved servers and is a known issue (especially for matrix.org). There was an interesting articel about that on t2bot.io which was eye-opening to me (somehow it is a problem by design). Also notifications where a huge problem for all of us (everybody was using the f-droid version). So most of the time, the notification did arrive really late, or we already checked the phone on our own to see the new messages (or missed calls). Calls where not connecting many times (even if we used the same server) or were dropping without any obvious reason. The verification process was slow and sometimes buggy (especially with iOS). And and and…
TL;DR: conversations/XMPP is my choice for android, for iOS it still needs development to be the perfect choice. riot/matrix is working crossplatform, but me and my friends were quite disappointed after one month of many (small) bugs.
@tial I found all of the same problems with Matrix. I have my own server but everything is painfully slow. I also have an XMPP server which goes like greased lightning. Conversations is an excellent app for Android and has a number of equally good forks for anyone looking for a slightly different UX. I haven’t tried any of this with iPhone users though. The ones I know seem incapable of grasping the idea that there is any reason to move from the iMessage/WhatsApp combo. 
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@tial and @Vaughan thank you for sharing your experiences.
I also experience these problems but the problem was with Riot, the Android app, and not with Matrix/Synapse. When I use it only in the browser, all works very fine.
These last few days I was testing Riot on a new Android 10 phone and it’s not working unless you open the app, like you said.
I’ve always liked the XMPP solution but I could never manage to make Prosody, eJabberd or OpenFire to work properly.
After reading this topic I’ll give a shot at Movim (https://movim.eu/).
It uses XMPP, can be self hosted (or you can use a public server), there are clients for Android / Browser / Linux / macOS / Windows (as stated here: https://xmpp.org/software/clients.html), and can share links and files and perform text, audio and video chats.
And the Android app can be found in F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/pt_BR/packages/com.movim.movim/
I’ll keep you posted.
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Nice, looking forward to your experiences! 
But that would not solve the discussed problems with iOS though…
And just to make that clear: I was not writing to convince anybody to switch to XMPP. If matrix is fine for you, than stay with matrix. Its just not my choice for the given reasons.
To be honest, i didn’t try to host XMPP myself yet, because I have a perfectly-working and trustworthy server I can rely on. So I can’t say anything about your problems with that. But the huge amount of working servers is somehow a proof, that it is possible.