How's signal compared to Element?
Also, is there a secure way to directly send messages to someone else's phone without the message having to be stored on a central server? As in they're only stored on the recipient device. Is that even possible with how the internet works and how packets are routed between networks? Even if the server has no way of decrypting messages by default, just having the encrypted messages stored there is a liability because your encryption keys can easily get leaked by malware running on your device, phishing, etc.