# Element 50 Hacker News commenters recommended Element and 77 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (5 owners). **Verdict:** Free encrypted Matrix chat app that works across platforms and video calls well; critics say it is slow and buggy. ## Why people recommend it - Works across all platforms (2 comments): "Element seems to have worked well and was consistent and reliable on all platforms." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46165153)) "Element has web embeddings for links now, it has all the platforms supported" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46981979)) - Reliable reference Matrix client (3 comments): "the main, reference client https://element.io/ or https://fluffy.chat would work great for you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949276)) "Element seems to be a genuine attempt to fully assemble Matrix as one full project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945332)) "a single reference client (Element) that actually worked" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035887)) - Video calls with many participants (3 comments): "it's been working flawlessly, including for all our video calls with many participants" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989545)) "One can create a standing call room that people can join or leave as they see fit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998040)) "Element Call for proper encrypted group VoIP/Video these days rather than Jitsi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46903661)) - Well funded and actively developed (2 comments): "all of Element is laser-focused on making the Element apps & servers as good as we possibly can" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46903527)) "Element has put tens of millions of dollars into Matrix over the years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910712)) ## What people warn about - Buggy and flaky features (3 comments): "element otherwise does exactly what we want but it makes me nervous it's so badly supported and buggy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989631)) "This general flakiness of features just sometimes not working as they should is probably the main reason I haven't tried to recommend friends to switch to element" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45990719)) "Scale matters. Once you achieve over a hundred of users, you got all the random bugs, and glitches appearing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991472)) - Slow and laggy performance (3 comments): "Element is cripplingly slow and has an entire drama with a decade-long issue where they continually refuse working commits because they didn't come from in-house." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975382)) "Element in particular is embarrassingly bad. (Consistently, for the past 5 years, through the present)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436684)) "which hasn't been touched for 3 years now, and definitely did feel like a laggy MSN by comparison" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945507)) - Recovery key and verification problems (2 comments): "I last tried Element about six months ago, but for years using the recovery key was either impossible or close to it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988928)) "Riot.im/Element.io changes to the homeserver over these many years have made it so none of our accounts properly verify" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993160)) - Missing features and clumsy navigation (2 comments): "the continuing lack of long-form composition or history navigation appears to be a liability with some contacts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46946240)) "Every, single, time I have to go "Home" -> "Expand" -> "Favorites" to do what used to take one click" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699444)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Signal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/signal.md): 486 recommend - [Bitchat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitchat.md): 56 recommend - [Briar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/briar.md): 50 recommend - [Delta Chat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delta-chat.md): 48 recommend - [SimpleX Chat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/simplex.md): 45 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Element", https://hackerapproved.com/p/element/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).