DEV Community: Alexandra Surzha

The Self-Hosted Alternative to Teams

Alexandra Surzha — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 12:41:03 +0000

In 2024, Skype for Business Server reached end of support and stopped receiving security updates, leaving systems exposed to cyberattacks. Microsoft recommends migrating to Teams, but for organizations with sensitive data or strict compliance requirements, this isn’t always a safe or viable option.
While Teams is popular, it lacks self-hosting, privacy controls, and flexibility that many businesses need.
Virola brings together all essential team communication tools in one secure platform - no compatibility issues, smoother workflows, and stronger data protection.
Below is a feature comparison of Skype for Business Server, Microsoft Teams, and Virola Messenger.

Lightweight team chat messengers with low RAM consumption

Alexandra Surzha — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:21:36 +0000

High RAM / CPU usage is one of the problems users of team chat messengers may face, especially Slack or MS Teams users. It is very troublesome when the team chat app starts lagging while you are using voice chat together with a high-performance application like a video-making tool or a video game. Thus, for those users who value their PC resources, it is important to have a team chat app with low RAM consumption. Here is my list of top team and gaming chat messengers:

Virola Messenger

Virola is a low-latency, self-hosted, secure team chat app that consumes about 60-70 MB of RAM during voice chats. Virola is straightforward in installation. You can either install it on your own or on a virtual server.

For gamers, Virola offers a handy feature — the ability to suppress the sound of other applications during voice chats. Moreover, it is completely free for small teams up to 10 users. Virola Messenger also provides a set of powerful features for efficient collaboration and communication. This makes it the number one chat messenger with low RAM and CPU consumption for gamers and team collaboration.

Mumble

Mumble is a free, open-source, low-latency, high-quality voice chat application. It is popular among gamers who prioritize performance, low latency, and security during voice communication. Mumble focuses on simplicity and low resource usage. It boasts excellent voice quality and positional audio, making it ideal for team-based games. However, Mumble has a quite basic user interface and lacks built-in chat or social features like friends lists, emojis, or media sharing.

Discord

Discord is great for playing games and communicating with friends. It delivers comprehensive experience with configurable servers, voice and text channels, and supports cross-platform communication. It also integrates seamlessly with major gaming platforms. Discord is more than just a voice messenger — it's a full-featured social and collaboration hub for gaming communities.

At the same time, Discord desktop app consumes a lot of RAM — 400–600 MB. Thus, if you need to avoid latency, use a browser version instead.

Element

Element is a secure, open-source chat and voice messenger built on the Matrix protocol. While it's not as mainstream in gaming as Discord, some users, especially privacy-conscious or technically savvy gamers, like using Element while playing games. However, it is known to be a powerful collaboration platform used by organizations of any size. To avoid latency while using Element, you need to switch to a browser version (Element Hydrogen).

Conclusion

No matter whether you play games, render videos, or work on projects that consume a lot of RAM and CPU resources, you need a stable, secure, and low-latency voice chat messenger to communicate with your team. However, many low-latency team chat apps are primitive and lack features important for efficient collaboration. Virola Messenger combines all the features you need to stay productive and save your computer resources.

How to deploy an on-premise app if I don't have a server?

Alexandra Surzha — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:11:23 +0000

Unlike SaaS applications which are hosted and maintained on vendor's servers, hosted applications can be installed remotely on any server you rent and managed by you or the hosting service company. If you do not have your own server, you can rent a virtual machine and deploy a hosted app there. Self-hosted application is installed like traditional software with the only difference that you do this on a remote server you rent from a hosting services provider. In this case, you own a software license and must pay only for the space on a third-party server and a monthly fee for its maintenance. On the other side, if you use a SaaS application, you pay a subscription fee that includes the license price and maintenance costs.

Let's sum up and see what the main benefits of hosted applications over cloud applications are:

Cost efficiency: you purchase a license and then only pay for the server resources and maintenance
Flexibility: you can implement more changes
Security: lowered risk of cybersecurity threats and attacks

What type of hosting should I choose for my app?

The choice depends on the data volume you are going to host and the resource consumption you expect. You can choose from five types of hosting for deploying your application. Let's see their advantages and disadvantages.

Shared hosting

With shared hosting you can rent a shared virtual machine for a very low price. This type of hosting is suitable for small companies and start-ups that do not consume much resources. It's quite user-friendly and does not require specific skills for deploying an app.

Shared Virtual Machine hosting enables multiple guest virtual machines to operate on a single physical machine, sharing its computational resources, such as CPU, memory, and disk space

For example, for new users of Virola corporate messenger, we recommend starting with shared hosting and deploying Virola there to test and see whether it meets the company's expectations.

Managed hosting

In managed hosting, clients can lease resources like dedicated servers, storage, and network hardware, along with operating systems and system software. The rented equipment is used exclusively by one customer, often referred to as a "tenant" in a single-tenancy architecture. In this arrangement, the hosting provider handles tasks such as server setup, configuration, monitoring, security, backups, software updates, and technical support.

VPS hosting

A virtual private server (VPS) is a system that contains all the necessary software and data to operate your application. It is called "virtual" because it uses only a fraction of the server's physical resources, which are overseen by a third-party provider. However, you still receive dedicated access to your allocated resources on that hardware. VPS hosting uses virtualization technology to split a single physical machine into multiple private server environments that share the resources

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting is a type of Internet hosting where a physical server (or multiple servers) is exclusively allocated to a single business client. The client has full control over the server, allowing them to customize it to meet specific needs, such as performance and security. The hosting provider is responsible for supplying the physical server, the hosting environment, related services, and technical support.

Unlike managed hosting, with dedicated hosting server management is in your hands. You can install the necessary software, update your applications, or perform a backup. You do not need contact support for any of these operations.

Colocation hosting

In colocation hosting, businesses retain ownership of their hardware but seek to enhance its functionality by leasing server space in a data center. This arrangement offers advantages such as enhanced Internet bandwidth, efficient server cooling and climate control systems, and dependable power supply.

How to deploy Virola corporate messenger if you don't have a server

Virola corporate messenger is a self-hosted application that can be installed on your own server or the server or virtual machine you rent. Compared to cloud-based apps, hosting the application yourself gives you more responsibility for its performance. At the same time, you will have more confidence in your data security and will have a certain level of flexibility to make necessary updates or changes.

Virola corporate messenger can be deployed on any type of hosting: shared, dedicated, VPS, managed, or colocation. We have prepared some guidelines to help you deploy Virola corporate messenger app in your environment:

How to run Virola on AWS cloud hosting
How to deploy Virola on DigitalOcean
How to install Virola on Linode virtual machine

The choice of hosting type depends on your requirements and budget. While shared hosting is the most cost-effective and colocation one is the most expensive with maximum control over the hardware and software, you still have a choice between VPS, dedicated, and managed hosting. Our technical service team will help you deploy Virola corporate messenger on any type of hosting.