for a couple of years now I'm trying to offer an alternative to WhatsApp for my family and friends.
I found ejabberd to be quite versatile but somewhat hard to configure (although it got easier over the years).
But I wonder if there are any good alternatives. Of course I googled every now and then but most of the results lacked first hand experience.
An alternative programm should provide the following:
Available on many platforms.
Prividing a smartphone friendly web interface.
Hostable on an Ubuntu 18.04 server.
(Somewhat) Easy to configure.
Integration with other services / decentralised. (A jabber server can communicate with many other xmpp servers for instance.)
I'm aware that it would be the easiest to just use an existing alternative to WhatsApp. But that would rob me of the fun of tinkering with my server.
Thanks in advance
Markus
