Yeah but if you want truly self hosted AND full feature set (notably search and archives) AND owning your data, there isn't much available putting Zulip far on top.
IRC could do it, but IRC never got a clean and prettified client that bob from accounting knows how to use properly, and finding the proper server software sucks.
Fwiw self hosting Element and a Matrix homeserver like Synapse provides a full Matrix feature set (including search, archiving and everything else). You don't lose out for self hosting.
IRC could do it, but IRC never got a clean and prettified client that bob from accounting knows how to use properly, and finding the proper server software sucks.