Using someone else’s chat service means your contact graph and metadata live with them, even when the messages are encrypted. A Matrix homeserver moves that to your own machine: your users get handles on your domain, and you decide what is retained. Offshore and no KYC, the server is not registered to your identity either.
What you get
- End-to-end encryption, with keys held by the clients rather than the server
- Federation: talk to users on other homeservers, or keep to your own
- Any Matrix client: Element, Cinny and the rest
- Offshore, no KYC, crypto billing, with no usage statistics sent anywhere by default
Get it running
Choose the server name carefully
Your domain becomes part of every user handle, as in @you:example.com. This is effectively permanent: changing it later means rebuilding the homeserver and reissuing every account. Decide before you install.
Install it in one click
Install Matrix from the catalog with that hostname. HTTPS is issued for you. See how one-click installs work.
Create your accounts
Register the accounts you need and connect with any Matrix client. Point people at your homeserver instead of a public one.
Decide how open it should be
A homeserver for a small group and a homeserver open to the public are very different services. Keep registration closed unless you intend to run a community.
Unlike most settings, the Matrix server name cannot be changed after the fact without starting over. Use a domain you own and intend to keep, not a temporary subdomain.
End-to-end encryption means your homeserver cannot read message bodies. It still handles who talks to whom and when, and federating with another server shares some of that with it. If a conversation must leave no trace anywhere else, keep it within your own homeserver.
Synapse can report usage statistics upstream. On our install it defaults to off, which is the right default for a privacy-first deployment. Turn it on only if you want to support the project.
The catalog install uses a SQLite backend, which is right for a personal or small-team homeserver. A busy public server with heavy federation is a different workload: plan for more memory and a proper database.
Start now
Spin up an offshore VPS and install Matrix from the catalog, or read the documentation.