Movim review 2026: how this open-source, decentralized XMPP social network and webmail platform works, its features, and how it compares to alternatives.
Movim is an open-source project that turns the decades-old XMPP messaging protocol into the backbone of a modern, decentralized social network. Rather than running its own centralized servers the way commercial social platforms do, Movim is a client application that anyone can self-host or access through one of many independently run public instances.
Founded by Timothee Jaussoin in 2010, Movim has grown into a mature community project offering chat, group video calls, blogging, and topic-based communities, all federated across the wider XMPP network so that Movim users can also communicate with people on entirely different XMPP clients and servers.
Movim supports one-to-one and group messaging, video conferencing, and OMEMO end-to-end encryption for private conversations. Its social layer lets users publish Markdown-formatted posts to a personal timeline, with automatic embedding of shared links and images, similar to a federated blog.
Communities in Movim function like topic-focused public spaces that anyone can join or create, and because the whole platform runs on the XMPP protocol, it interoperates with a large ecosystem of existing XMPP clients and servers such as ejabberd and Prosody, rather than being a walled garden.
Movim is completely free and open source, released under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. There is no paid tier or subscription; anyone can self-host their own instance at no software cost or create a free account on one of the public community-run instances such as the official movim.eu.
Because the project is community-maintained rather than a commercial company, ongoing development is funded through donations and volunteer contributions rather than product revenue.
Yes, Movim is entirely free and open source under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license, with no paid plans.
Yes, Movim requires an XMPP/Jabber account, which can be created on a public XMPP server or a Movim public instance such as join.movim.eu.
Both. Movim combines XMPP-based chat and video calls with a blogging and Communities system, functioning as a federated social network built on messaging infrastructure.
Yes, because Movim uses the standard XMPP protocol, its users can communicate with people using other XMPP clients like Conversations, Pidgin, or Gajim.
Movim was founded by developer Timothee Jaussoin in 2010 and continues to be maintained by a small community of open-source contributors.
Yes, Movim's source code is publicly available and organizations or individuals can self-host their own instance connected to an XMPP server such as ejabberd or Prosody.