I would like to know which solution is more powerful - Openfire or eJabberd? Or in other words: Why should I use Openfire instead of eJabberd?
I ask because I often read eJabberd is more powerful, offers clustering and so on. Ok the admin area is not very nice but in fact most public services (ebuddy…) seems to use eJabberd.
So I asked myself what is the big difference?
Of course, you’‘re asking this question in a very biased place. I’‘ll provide a few bullet points, but I’'d suggest trying both and forming your own opinion. In general, we try not to get into huge debates about “which server is better”.
If you want gateways to other IM networks like AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc then you’'ll want to use Openfire.
Openfire clustering will soon be available and should be far easier to setup than ejabberd clustering. On the other hand, it will be a commercial feature.
Openfire is generally much easier to setup and maintain than other servers.
Openfire scaling is proven to many, many thousands of concurrent users.
Openfire’‘s protocol compliance has generally been the best available and we’'re working hard to continue this through things like PEP compliance.
Regards,
Matt
Hi Lindstrom,
if you are already running a lot of Java based applications and some databases engines in your computing center then you may want to use another Java based product which supports one of the databases you support.
If you are running already Erlang products you may want to use it. But looking at the forum I wonder if new “News” will be posted there again, the current news were posted “2 years 3 weeks ago by mremond”.
So Openfire versions are released quite often and it is Java based, so you may easy find a developer to write a plugin while it may be a little bit harder to get a newer eJabberd server and to find a developer for it.
LG
what scaling options does the non-commercial version of openfire support currently?
For the upcoming release of Openfire, we tested over 100k concurrent connections on a single box. That was doing special load testing, so the actual number of users you could fit on one box might be lower. Still, the main point is that you’'ll be able to run a LOT of users on one box. The current release is also very scalable, but not quite to those numbers.
-Matt
Thanks for your answers. I am still not sure, because there must be a reason why so many public projects use eJabberd. Ok, the clustering solution is one point and as you wrote you are working on one for Openfire. But what will it cost?
I also checked the features of eJabberd. When you take a look on their features do you see any big differences or advantages of eJabberd?
For example they wrote there:
Administrator Friendly
+ejabberd is built on top of the
Open Source Erlang. As a result you do not need to install an external
database, an external web server, amongst others because everything is
already included, and ready to run out of the box.+
Is this an advantage against Openfire which needs a SQL data base?
Thanks for your help!!!
{quote:title=matt wrote:}{quote}Of course, you’‘re asking this question in a very biased place.
I’‘ll provide a few bullet points, but I’‘d suggest trying both and forming your own opinion. In general, we try not to get into huge debates about “which server is better”. * If you want gateways to other IM networks like AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc then you’'ll want to use Openfire.
Why?: http://ejabberd.jabber.ru/tutorials-transports Also no lock-in with these transports…
- Openfire clustering will soon be available and should be far easier to setup than ejabberd clustering. On the other hand, it will be a commercial feature.
It also can be easier with ejabberd if you pay for it. Thought, easy is relative (e.g. IMO Windows is not so easy): http://www.process-one.net/en/teamleader/
- Openfire is generally much easier to setup and maintain than other servers.
Teamleader again + it’s again something relative: some things are easier to do in Openfire, whilst some are easier in ejabberd. Also, setup is normally something you only do once and maintaining is not per se something you need to do every day (hopefully). Whilst jabberd14 was (and is?) extremely difficult to setup if you want to compile it from source; it’s not much work afterwards. Also, deployment of any Jabber server is far more easy than deploying an email installation.
- Openfire scaling is proven to many, many thousands of concurrent users.
Openfire probably (I did not tested it) scales enough for many deployments, but saying this is an advantage over ejabberd is maybe a bit biased 
fyi: ejabberd scales enough to convince ISPs and other instances that want to do “mega deployments”…
- Openfire’‘s protocol compliance has generally been the best available and we’'re working hard to continue this through things like PEP compliance.
When will Jive Software standardize the Spark-only extensions though the XEP process?
- +Administrator Friendly+
- +ejabberd is built on top of the Open Source Erlang. As a result you do not need to install an external database, an external web server, amongst others because everything is already included, and ready to run out of the box.+
- >>> Is this an advantage against Openfire which needs a SQL data base? AFAIR Openfire has something similar. However, the built-in database that ejabberd can use has more features than that of Openfire (fault-tolerance, clustering, scalability). More information: http://www1.erlang.org/documentation/doc-5.0.1/lib/mnesia-3.9.2/doc/html/part_fr ame.html