Ah, so I can get this free opensource decentralized solution if I pay a company to host it for me on their centralized server, got it.
I mean i wouldnt have a problem paying one-time fee of around $100 if that would mean I can get that soft running locally for my groups, but I guess I am not the target potential customer group.
If you want to self-host the actual free open-source software, you can totally do that. You just shouldn't go looking at the product page of the enterprise offering for it (:
It looks like ESS is mostly managed deployment of otherwise opensourced software like Synapse, Element Web, Element Call, and friends. And I guess they have some backoffice with a glossy web UI for account/user management.
It is free and opensource, but there are different parts to it if you selfhost. Synapse is the Matrix server backend, and Element is the UI (web/mobile app). [0]
ESS is a paid, fully managed service by the Element team for ease of use.
You can also host it yourself, but what ESS offers is a combination of multiple discrete services. You’re gonna have to host Synapse itself, the Matrix Authentication Service (for native OIDC), Element Call (which requires LiveKit) and Element Web.
They ship a k8s operator that deploys Synapse, will try that later. Supposedly it's free up to 200 users. But it seems like there's 0 documentation past the README.
