Meet Your Family's Own Chat

Family Chat is a group chat that belongs to your family and nobody else. It runs on its own private server, only people you invite can join, and every conversation is end-to-end encrypted, so the messages and photos in it can only be read on your family's own phones, tablets and laptops.

It speaks Matrix, an open chat standard, so nobody is locked into one company's app. Your family picks whichever free Matrix app suits them: FluffyChat on a phone, Element on a laptop, or Element in the browser on a school Chromebook.

There's no sign-up page for strangers to find. You create your own account first, then hand each family member a one-time invite code. That's the whole guest list.

Why Family Chat Makes Life Easier

• A chat for kids who are too young for the big social apps. Family Chat is yours, so the house rules are too.
• Private by design. Rooms are encrypted from the moment they're created. We store your messages only in encrypted form and can't read them.
• Works on the devices you already own. iPhone, Android, tablets and Chromebooks, all with free apps.
• No strangers, ever. Invite codes work once and expire after a week.
• Nothing to babysit. Updates and backups happen without you, and if you're the family's tech person, the chat keeps running even when you're not around to fix things.

Product Highlights

A private setup page, visible only to you, gives you your server address and a one-time token for your own account, with click-to-copy for both.

The first account becomes the family admin. From the admin room, one short message creates each family member's invite code.

Want addresses like @mia:chat.yourfamily.com? Add the Custom Domain addon and your chat uses your own domain.

Family Chat is closed by default. If you'd like to chat with people on servers you trust, such as the grandparents' own Family Chat, list those servers and it talks to them and nobody else.

Technical Specifications

• 💬 Runs tuwunel, an open source Matrix server, unmodified
• 🔒 End-to-end encryption on for every new room
• 🎟️ Invite-only: registration needs a token, single-use invites for everyone after you
• 📱 Works with FluffyChat, Element and other Matrix apps on iOS, Android and the web
• 🌐 Optional custom domain, optional allowlist of other servers to chat with
• 🗄️ Daily backups included; text, photos and files (voice and video calls are not available yet)

Let ElfHosted Handle the Heavy Lifting for Family Chat

• We run, update and back up your server, so you're not the one on call when Grandma's messages stop arriving.
• Your chat server is yours alone, not a shared one, with its own address, invites and admin.
• Stuck? Sam, our assistant, and the humans in our Discord know Family Chat inside out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can ElfHosted read our messages?
No. Messages and files in encrypted rooms are stored only in encrypted form, and the keys stay on your family's devices. Like any chat server, it still knows who is in which room and when messages are sent, because it has to deliver them.

Which app should my family use?
FluffyChat is the friendliest on phones and tablets. Element works everywhere, including in a browser on a Chromebook, where Chrome can install it like an app.

How do family members join?
You create your account first, then send one message in your admin room for each person to get their own one-time invite code. They install an app and sign up with it.

What if I lose my phone?
Save the recovery key your app offers when you set up. It's what lets you read your old messages on a new device. Because the chat is end-to-end encrypted, we can't recover it for you.

Can we use our own domain?
Yes, with the Custom Domain addon. Choose it before your family creates accounts: a chat server's name is part of every account on it and can't change later.

Is this the official Matrix service?
No. Matrix is an open standard, and Family Chat runs the open source tuwunel server. ElfHosted is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Matrix.org Foundation or the tuwunel project.

Family Chat gives your family a private, encrypted place to talk, on any device, with no strangers and nothing to maintain.

Start your 7-day ElfHosted trial and have the whole fellowship chatting by dinner.