Alternatives to Discord

[Sentry64]

I did hear about polyphony but it isn't quite done yet since it's so early in development that it isn't in a usable state yet, but i thought i might slide it in here cause i thought it might've been interesting to keep an eye out for. (and possibly use in the future whenever it's done and ready)

I did try stoat (formerly called "Revolt", just a fun fact) but it seems a bit janky to me to be honest doesn't feel quite smooth, but that could just be me but it is somewhat usable in my opinion.

[alexela64]

the only reason why I use it is because that's already where a lot of my friends are and if I were to try convincing them to move to an alternative platform, it would be met with deaf ears.

This is my main issue with alternatives. Nearly everyone i know is not involved in the web revival circle so they have little to no technical or secure knowledge (they log in to a lot of stuff with google). I would have a lot of trouble migrating people from an ecosystem that they not only know well, but have customized with things like pins, favorited gifs, bots etc. I'm afraid that if I try to convince them to move off the platform, I'll be met with flat out refusal -- or worse, begrudging acceptance that leads to no one using the new setup.

Saying all this to ask, what would be the best discord alternative that maybe has a function to transfer a server? Does any such service exist?

[kringle]

Saying all this to ask, what would be the best discord alternative that maybe has a function to transfer a server? Does any such service exist?

idk about transfering servers but i was browsing through the different alternatives mentioned in this thread and it seems like matrix has several discord bridges? where you could have the server exist both on matrix and discord. maybe that could be a interim solution as you try to hook them into it?

[oversky]

Discord announcing age verification worldwide has been the push I needed to give migrating away a shot.

My discord server has a pretty high concentration of nerds so I'm going to have a go setting up a Matrix server, I'll let you know how it goes.

Does anyone have recommendations for client applications? Element seems like the default choice.

[lakes]

Does anyone have recommendations for client applications? Element seems like the default choice.

Element's more polished. But I use Nheko for the custom emojis and message search. I also have a friend who uses Fluffychat as their preferred Matrix app for similar reasons.

[Bone-A Lisa]

Unfortunately it seems that no service has been able to replicate everything that Discord does, in a single package. Things like Matrix do chat very well, but their voice / screensharing are not great. Teamspeak 6 honestly does way better than Discord for voice and video, but their text is awful to say the least 

I've kind of come to the conclusion that my group of friends is likely going to have to break up Discord into parts. When we get on and want to play games and share our screens, we will be in Teamspeak 6. And when we want to send texts to each other and have different text channels, Matrix is probably what we are going to use.

I just setup both a Teamspeak server and a Matrix server yesterday, so heres to hoping I can get my friends moved over easy 

[Gnee]

idk about transfering servers but i was browsing through the different alternatives mentioned in this thread and it seems like matrix has several discord bridges? where you could have the server exist both on matrix and discord. maybe that could be a interim solution as you try to hook them into it?

If anyone here has experience using Matrix, I'd really love to know more about how good bridging is. I run a small community and the most ideal thing, of course, would be to have a frictionless alternative that doesn't fragment said community. My friend running the community with me says he's seen someone use a channel that Matrix bridges to, but it's not very reliable or consistent, with some messages not coming through at all. That could be dependent on the hosting, of course- if they're self hosting with a mediocre connection or something. But if not, then bridging isn't all that useful to begin with if it doesn't work.

The other option I'm looking at is Stout. It seems very similar, and it being open source gives me some hope for it in the long run. I don't expect it to be as polished as Discord is at this stage, but it's hard to tell what others will put up with.

It sucks because I'm trying to keep a community around my game, so it's not just about what me and my friends are willing to make the switch to, but how to keep as many out of about 200 people as possible. :/

[lakes]

The other option I'm looking at is Stout. It seems very similar, and it being open source gives me some hope for it in the long run. I don't expect it to be as polished as Discord is at this stage, but it's hard to tell what others will put up with.

I used to be on Stoat back when it was called Revolt. However as a warning, the moderation has gotten worse over time, it doesn't have end to end encryption, and I think they introduced a paid tier.

[Bone-A Lisa]

If anyone here has experience using Matrix, I'd really love to know more about how good bridging is

I've been using Matrix for a bit, only just recently started self-hosting my own Home Server. I can say that the bridging is pretty good. Its not 100% flawless though, there are a few main problems I've noticed with bridges:

• If the bridge goes down or has issues, messages destined for the bridge are usually lost
• Moderation doesnt cross the bridge, so you would need to take moderator actions in either App
• Not all chat features are supported both ways. Message reacts being a big one I noticed, but even editing messages seems to just resend the message across the bridge.
• There are security concerns about using public bridges if you dont run your own. As far as I can tell, the bridges are able to see all messages that pass through it, so if you don't trust the person running the bridge, its dangerous.

Ultimately, its not as good as talking on the platform natively, but its a pretty close second. The big upside of bridges is bridging to multiple apps. A lot of spaces I see run a Matrix server and an IRC server, and bridge them together. You can then bridge discord in as well and Matrix acts as a hub to bridge all these apps together, which is pretty cool IMO, if a little clunky lol. If your goal is to be able to move the core of your community off Discord, while also prevent alienating people who refuse to move off, the bridge should work pretty well. But to be clear, Ive never run a public community off of it so I am speaking from very little, if any, experience lol

[sokil]

I used to be on Stoat back when it was called Revolt. However as a warning, the moderation has gotten worse over time, it doesn't have end to end encryption, and I think they introduced a paid tier.

in what ways has the moderation gotten worse? revolt/stoat isn't something i've used very much; i made an account a while ago just to give it a test and only periodically check it. as far as i can tell, end to end encryption is still something they're working on implementing (here's one of the devs mentioning it just a few months ago). i've also seen no mention of a paid tier anywhere - are you sure you're not mixing it up with rocket.chat or something similar?

[lakes]

in what ways has the moderation gotten worse?

my friend reported someone who sent a dick pic to a 16 year old and instead of banning the guy, my friend's account got suspended over it

revolt/stoat isn't something i've used very much; i made an account a while ago just to give it a test and only periodically check it. as far as i can tell, end to end encryption is still something they're working on implementing (here's one of the devs

while it's possible they'll implement ee2e at some point, they've made this promise years ago.

mentioning it just a few months ago). i've also seen no mention of a paid tier anywhere - are you sure you're not mixing it up with rocket.chat or something similar?

i asked my friend if i remembered this correctly and they sent this. they might've went back on the idea and maybe that's why


This person can use Stoat if they want. I just thought I'd mention it because that was my experience with the app. Maybe yours is different.
Edit: that person's account might've been suspended for different reasons. i'm not sure yet. sorry if i was wrong

[TeaInTheMorning]

Hey y'all, heard recently via Castle Super Beast (a podcast I enjoy) that Discord is going openly traded soon, meaning its most likely to follow the drum beat of the tech/gaming market, IE: Enshittified  

Figured I'd shoot a question here for recommendations and alternatives that y'all may know. Many of my friends are fairly busy so user friendliness is preferred, but I'm open to ideas and suggestions. I'm somewhat familiar with Teamspeak and Mumble though I havent used them much. Telegram exists but I'm rather iffy on it at best. Thanks in advanced!

My personal suggestions would be:
Matrix (   )- A bit esotaric to the non-techie but very flexible! It can get very close to, or very far from discord visually depending on your client of choice!
Signal (     ) - This is only really a good option if you are looking for the dm aspect. It also requires a phone
IRC (   to  ) - This probably doesn't make sense depending on your usecase! But if you mostly use discord as a public chatroom this could be a good option
XMPP (?) - Don't know anything about it, just thought I'd mention it
Stoat (     ) - Not a fan, as it lacks e2ee encryption, but you might like it! It's probably the closest option functionally

I have given them watermelon ratings by ease of setup on a scale of 1-3

[warlock]

Hey y'all, welcome to the end of privacy and anonymity on the internet!

I've been using Matrix for a while, and it's probably the most feature complete "discord-esque" chat service currently available. The spaces and rooms basically function like discord servers and channels, and the voice chat is pretty feature complete. Element is the preferred client for stuff like voice calls, and it's probably the best client in general, so there isn't much friction in that regard.

Some of my friends are working on trying out Stoat - their servers were totally messed up yesterday because of the sheer amount of people who were trying to sign up, so we haven't been able to get anybody actually in, but that's one thing that we've been looking at. Another few people are interested in Fluxer which appears to be a pretty good drop-in replacement for discord, matching its layout almost down to a T. As of yet I'm not aware of anybody testing it, but it is an option that I've heard thrown around.

Honestly my favorite up to this point has still been IRC. Having a chat that you're encouraged to either be idle in while you're on your computer or totally disconnected from was nice, and it meant that my conversations were more meaningful in the moment. The sort of quick quippiness that prevails in Discord and its ilk didn't really work, so my friends and I ended up having legitimately great conversations. Of course, its limitations kept most people away, but the few people that I did convince to switch to it really liked it.

My other suggestion is to maybe look into tilde communities. They're a huge commitment if you're starting one yourself, but there are a ton that are available to join into. They are not for the faint of heart technically, but they are probably my favorite rendition of "online shared spaces." The way the community feels so tight knit, even when you join, is just unmatched.

Sorry, lots of words. TL;DR - if you're switching from discord right now, probably use Matrix, or something. Make sure to encourage your developer friends to look at contributing to whatever project you end up on either way, more developers means more functionality sooner!

[azalea]

really sad times that we're living in.

the problem with any sort of discord alternatives is that we have to look back and look at the reasons why discord is "successful" (in the sense of having a very large userbase). one of those very factors is the fact that it's very easy for the average, non-too tech savvy person to just... create a discord account, download the desktop client or even use the browser version, and immediately jump into their favourite servers and start chatting. it doesn't require much thought beyond that.

i really love IRC and wouldn't mind a return to the days of old, but i feel like you had to know what you were doing with IRC; it didn't exactly work "out of the box" in the same sense discord does. the hardest part is always getting started and the moment you introduce hurdles that sound complicated to the average person (where do i go in this program to establish a port? where do i go in my IRC client to connect to a web server?), they're probably going to give up and look for something more convenient.

prior to discord, this is why skype was also so ubiquitous. it was just. a program you can download and iirc as long as you had a microsoft account you were pretty much already set up. the convenience made sense for it to use at the time.

this is all to say that any alternative to discord will probably remain niche for the time being until there can be one which offers convenience and easy understanding in its use.

[grubbyfox]

I'd like to try Stoat, but idk yet. It doesn't work in Win7 afaik, doesn't offer E2EE (but most software with E2EE doesnt work on Win7 anyway afaik.)

I use Signal with one friend group on my Win11 pc and phone, but I want a vibey program, ya know? I want to have a fun avatar, being able to change your nick on a whim, have status updates and colors and all that MSN goodness. I dont want some lame corpo ugly basic chat program.

Crosstalk is a good option for just good vibes... but it's of course not encrypted/E2EE, and it doesnt offer channels and the "communities" people use in Discord. But it's a fun option for regular chatting, if you dont care about privacy I guess, lol. But also, like, the random low user number-softwares aren't exactly the main targets for hacks anyway.

I have to say, if you have a lot of gated communities and such in Discord.... what is stopping you from just creating a forum instead? I say that as someone who has a friend-group channel, but like...a forum is the exact same except it's not a chatting app. You can set up a forum to be walled in for member only, you can have stickied posts, pinned posts, large threads etc.

And you get the benefit of actually being able to find things more coherently. Discord channels always get bogged down with miles and miles of scrolling thru inane ramblings in large communities. I'm part of like 10+ servers and over half of them are so bogged down with like 20+ "channels" that make no sense (#general, #general2, #general3, #info, #announcements, #important, #news, #updates etc etc) and in every single channel there's always like 50+ people rambling about anything. God forbid you ask a question and nobody responds until 7 hours later and you're trying to scroll to find it again. It's miserable.

So my take on this is, if you need to move away to chat with friends, maybe Matrix or Stoat is a good option.

If you need to move a large community, I'd say look into starting an actual forum instead.

XMPP is probably also a good option. I dont really understand what it is. I've been watching videos about it and still feel completely clueless about it, haha.