In my opinion, Signal's UX is better than Element. Element's distinction of rooms / communities is not great, and hindered by the user interface. Although, after checking out Element again, all the other parts of the UI that I thought were unintuitive were changed up, so it's certainly improving.

Particularly for the situation you described - small, family chats - I'd recommend Signal over Element / Matrix.

If you want to support the project and get something from it, a good way is to get yourself a hosted server from Element. The cheapest plan is $10 per month for 5 users, and includes things like a custom domain.

https://element.io/plans-and-pricing/pro

Still not good, confusing and not very fast. Like Keybase four years ago. They have some catching up to do and I hope they do it before Keybase is shut down.

If a Riot contributor is reading this comment, go try Keybase out while you still can, there are things it does well.

Personally speaking, I'm extremely happy with Element.

With good UX, easy encryption, the option to self host if you feel so inclined, I haven't found anything to complain about.

I think it's pretty good! Been using it every day for the past year or so and most of the UX issues I've had before (channel switching, creation and discovery) has been more or less adressed!

The only UX feature I miss is threads to help organize bigger discussions better.

Element is probably harder to use than Signal for less technically inclined users.

There are some other matrix clients, like Pattle, which hide much of the complexity and give a more familiar UX to other messaging apps.