@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.
āand 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!ā
This is the bottom line. In the original post it says āAll in One voice, text, video & ability to send file attachmentsā - Iād 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 wonāt 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 . Iāve 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 wouldnāt 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 iphoneā¦
Once you find a good xmpp server with the right protocols, setting up the xmpp client should be very easyā¦
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 donāt 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 andā¦
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 havenāt 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 itās not working unless you open the app, like you said.
Iāve always liked the XMPP solution but I could never manage to make Prosody, eJabberd or OpenFire to work properly.
After reading this topic Iāll 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/
Iāll keep you posted.
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Nice, looking forward to your experiences! 
But that would not solve the discussed problems with iOS thoughā¦
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 didnāt try to host XMPP myself yet, because I have a perfectly-working and trustworthy server I can rely on. So I canāt say anything about your problems with that. But the huge amount of working servers is somehow a proof, that it is possible.
Donāt worry, I understand that; you just gave me ideas.
About iOs and XMPP there is Modal but I never tried or heard of anybody that used it.
I already used Conversations in a old XMPP server I had built for the office. Thereās a version in F-Droid.
I use Metronome as it is the default installed by Yunohost. I had to ask in the Metronome XMPP public room for some directions for STUN/TURN configuration but the help came quickly and now everything just works. The Yunohost Synapse installation takes care of installing Coturn so Iāll leave Synapse on the server and keep watching developments in the Matrix client arena. If anything gets to be usable then I could end up using both.
Now, how to convince WhatsApp users away from the dark side? Hmmmm. 
Thatās why I still try to use Matrix/Riot. Thereās a bridge to connect to WhatsApp so I can have an Android VM to host the WA app and remove it from my phone.
But I donāt think thereāll be a final solution for the next months.
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But you had to sign up and verify your number on the phone so much of the damage is already done.
Also, would the people you speak with on WA see any difference between the way you do it and just using the app? Iām not sure that this is doing anything to convince them to leave. But Iāve never used WA so maybe I thereās plenty I donāt know. Still, at least weāre all thinking about this stuff and trying things. 
Yes, the damage is done Iāve been using it for some time so they already have a bunch of info about me and all.
The point is that I gave up on trying to convince people not to use WA.
But I still have to talk to them so I just donāt wanna have it on my phone and use it the least I can.
Thatās my goal.
If anyone is wondering about iOS xmpp clients, there are Monal, ChatSecure and Siskin.
As it was mentioned, they do NOT support audio/video calls and it will take time they will. Tested Monal and ChatSecure, liked Monal better, it worked ok for messaging. Apple is really making hard the client development e.g. through api changes (as a sidenote Apple can be really nasty to developers/FLOSS developments). Gajim wanted to have Jingle development for audio/video calls during G Summer Code two or three years ago but nobody applied. They are kind of stuck with development.
@kalman
Thanks yes i had been wondering about iOS clients, i searched for about an hour to see if there was anything good for iphone and the only one seemed to be Monal but as i dont have an iphone there was no way to know about its capabilites, Thxs for letting us know that it cant do voice or video.
It is really sad as all my most of my family have bought into the iphone gimmick and they have owned one for years. Where they found the money to buy one i have no clue as they are so expensive.
I have told them their next phone should be from /e/ and have tried to explain the benfits, hopefully in the future they shall.
@facb69
Movim looks intresting, had they have had a windows desktop version i`d have tested it with my phone but sadly i only own one android, i shall keep an eye on that one thxs.
I think Xmpp is a nice protocol it always seemed reliable in the past when i had used it for PC, i am truely shocked at the lack of video, voice Xmpp apps for iphone, i had thought they had a strong community, but seems i`ve mistaken community for consumers. I had heard there are a number of obstacles to code for iOS and they seem to be many years behind on the Xmpp front.
As for other apps, i decided to try jitsi meet app to test and works very well, i had a very hard time to find the Jitsi meet windows version which does exist, but wasnt on their main website I had to look at their forum and found a link for PC windows, MacOS & Linux (downloads are halfway down the page under the heading : Installation)
I know some already use it Jitsi meet with matrix, but thought i`d try the standalone version. You can type text, voice video and share screen desktop within the app but, it is not really a tradtional messenger, in that you have to pre-arrange to meet in a virtual room, so oflline messaging isnt an option. I didnt spend much time with it, but seems to be an option for those in combination with another messenger.+ you can self host and is crossplatform for use with android and iphone to that is something. Tho their privacy policy does imply they can collect personal data ( i am guessing thats if you use their servers but dont know for sure how self hosting if the same apllies)
So in conclusion Rocketchat as mentioned in a previous comment and Jitsi-meet are crossplatform but can collect/harvest data)
If and when Signal remove the phone number request on signup i feel that could be the best crossplatformā¦ eventually,
Forget it. In my experience those iPhone users just donāt get what they are doing. They are convinced that the iPhone is the most secure and privacy respecting phone on the planet (and the best looking too). It isnāt. But appleās marketing works, they tend to stick to apple (as it has the most fool-proof design too, so itās relatively easy to use).
Wire should deserve more attention (it has everything, opensource, cross plattfrom, no phone number required). And Tox is often forgotten.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you have experience with RiotX by any chance (well knowijng that it is still under development)?
RiotX has fewer functions and this makes it less confusing. However, everything still runs like a dog with three legs going through treacle. This is probably because everything is still on the overloaded matrix.org server. I couldnāt recommend it to a neophyte. The big problem though, for Matrix AND XMPP, is the inertia of users of GAFAM services. To get people to move seems to require it to be easier than doing nothing. I despair.
Again some notes about Wire: We tested it with my GuildWars-Group, 3 Techies + 8 non Techies, after 6 Month we all were annoyed enough to move to Signal as the next best Solution we Techies found for our Guildies. We had all sorts of trouble on Iphones and Android Phones. Somtimes checking on Teamspeak who got a message and who not.
Not only had we delivery times up to several hours, some group messages did not reach all members which we confirmed with screenshots, not believing it at first. It happend to all of us, not only the iphones or androids or techies. And yes a great part of the group is happy with whatsapp and does not understand the security concern.
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Looks like the issues mentioned above only relate to group chats, right? Because I have been using Wire for one-to-one conversations for over a year and it works perfectly this way.
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