XMPP servers / communities?
from Matty_r@programming.dev to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 18:43
https://programming.dev/post/38638698

Hey all. I started writing an XMPP client just for learning purposes and I’m not sure on how widely used it actually is. Where is it actually used? Are there communities out there that actually use it?

Wasn’t sure where to actually post this. Sorry if its a bit off topic

#selfhosted

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poVoq@slrpnk.net on 06 Oct 19:32 next collapse

We have an !xmpp@slrpnk.net community here on Lemmy. Our SLRPNK instance also gives an XMPP account to every member automatically and hosts a Movim webclient for easy access.

XMPP is certainly more popular for private groups and 1:1 chatting so you will not find that many large public channels, but there is a search engine here: search.jabber.network/tags/

The JoinJabber project also has a curated list of recommended channels and communities: joinjabber.org/docs/faqs/rooms/

ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works on 06 Oct 20:50 next collapse

Is there a use case with bots and xmpp?

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 06 Oct 21:38 next collapse

What do you mean with bots in this context?

ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works on 07 Oct 01:11 collapse

I have seen telegram and Whatsapp bots that vänt control various selfhosted apps or just report from them. I just wondered if that was a thing on xmpp too.

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 07 Oct 11:58 collapse

The reverse, i.e. getting outage notifications and so on via xmpp is quite common.

I can’t really think of any usecase to control self-hosted apps from a messenger, but sure, technically you could write such a bot quite easily.

ZebraGoose@sh.itjust.works on 07 Oct 13:57 collapse

Ah okay, notifications would be nice.

I was thinking about n8n integrations for example

airikr@lemmy.ml on 06 Oct 23:12 collapse

No bots in XMPP, please.

BackYardIncendiary@lemmy.sdf.org on 07 Oct 01:56 collapse

Sadly, there’s already a lot of automated spam. It’s best to keep your address private.

airikr@lemmy.ml on 07 Oct 07:58 collapse

If that is true, I haven’t noticed anything yet.

BackYardIncendiary@lemmy.sdf.org on 07 Oct 13:42 collapse

I run a server for a small group. I think I was targeted because my email address was posted on the web.

I’m not sure how common of a problem it is, but once the spam starts the quantity of messages and the number of different senders is extraordinary.

airikr@lemmy.ml on 07 Oct 14:41 collapse

Ok. Same here, as of now (small group of people). I haven’t noticed any spam even if I have my XMPP address public. In pure text that is, but still.

Matty_r@programming.dev on 07 Oct 00:14 collapse

Awesom, thanks for that. I’ll do some digging to see how widely used it is. Cheers

tal@olio.cafe on 06 Oct 23:14 next collapse

jabber.org is a major server.

https://jabberworld.info/servers/

Matty_r@programming.dev on 07 Oct 00:17 next collapse

Thanks, is there any indication on the number of daily users for some of those servers? Some of the IRC indexes would have usage graphs to get an idea of how popular it was.

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 07 Oct 00:43 next collapse

XMPP is truly decentralized with no single point that collects this kind of data. There have been some attempts over the years, but they always failed to capture more than a fraction of the network. A recent one is more artistic in nature, probably realizing the futility of it.

The popular Conversations app has sold 100k+ units on the PlayStore, but since you can also legally get it for free, that is probably only part of the actual users.

Matty_r@programming.dev on 07 Oct 03:34 collapse

Thats great, thanks. By the sounds of it I can probably continue with developed, I just need to find where people are going and what servers have the biggest population.

Thanks again!

tal@olio.cafe on 07 Oct 01:35 collapse

I haven’t been using instant messaging programs much for some years, but checking https://old.reddit.com/r/xmpp/ I see:

https://www.glukhov.org/post/2025/09/xmpp-jabber-userbase-and-popularity/

This has an estimate of 13–20 million users globally for 2023, but warns that because many servers don’t publish information about their userbase, there’s necessarily uncertainty. According to it, Germany is the country with the largest userbase, followed by Russia, followed by the US.

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 07 Oct 00:33 collapse

Please don’t recommend jabber.org, it is super outdated and lacks almost all modern features.

Cyber@feddit.uk on 07 Oct 06:37 collapse

To answer your question on where it’s used, have you seen providers.xmpp.net ?

(It might be worth testing your client against a few different servers…)

That’s where I found who to use, until I get to setting up prosody at home.

Matty_r@programming.dev on 07 Oct 08:47 collapse

Lots there to take a look at. I’ll definitely be setting up unit tests to test out multiple servers for sure.