Time for a #discord alternatives thread, for no particular reason.
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@lenzgr oh sure I'll correct
@lenzgr confusingly I thought someone else pointed this out last night and I'd corrected already!
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Time for a #discord alternatives thread, for no particular reason.
I've actually been looking into all available options for the past few weeks for other reasons, so here's a thread to share what I've found.
In particular I'm looking for stuff with:
* Data sovereignty
* Strong moderation tools
* Wide platform supportHopefully this gives everyone else some ideas too, and feel free to chime in with corrections, suggestions or anything else!
@mdiluz I use Element https://element.io
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Mattermost sometimes comes up
* Fully released
* Limited free use*
* "Open core"?
* Self-hostable
* Some E2E?
* Supports calls
* No web app (*correction: appears to have one)Mattermost is interesting, but seems to be far more of an enterprise solution. It's even hard to figure out *what* you get from self hosting, what actually is open source, etc.
I think it's probably worth investigating further if you're looking for something for your company/teams?
@mdiluz mattermost is what you go for if your company team is used to slack UI and you don't want to carry on paying Slack
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And finally, Matrix. This is by far the most common suggestion I get. Especially here given the shared ethos of federation.
* Fully released
* Free
* Open Source
* Self-hostable*
* E2E
* Calls*
* Moderation*
* Supported everywhereMatrix fills in *so* many of the requirements here, but still has issues.
You can self-host, but your homeserver has to host the full history and data in any channel that a signed up user joins. You could however not allow sign-ups, and just have channels.
@mdiluz when you mention hosting the full channel data a user joins do you mean local or any external channel too?
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@scott @CoMaps yeah for sure, I think if Zulip's conversation model fits with your needs it might be a great option! I'm fascinated by what they've done and I think if I had more time with it I'd be able to develop the mental model needed to use it.
I'm probably going to consider it in situations where Discourse might have been an option - it feels like an awesome forum/chat fusion for project support and discussion.
@mdiluz 100%! I am still "developing the mental model".
Discourse is nice but to me feels… slower. Like a better forum, not a chat. I think that's on purpose, of course. Each has it's purpose!
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@lenzgr confusingly I thought someone else pointed this out last night and I'd corrected already!
@mdiluz no worries, thanks for the update!
BTW, this blog post from @mttaggart might be interesting in this context: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
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@mdiluz no worries, thanks for the update!
BTW, this blog post from @mttaggart might be interesting in this context: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
@lenzgr @mttaggart yup! They're down elsewhere in the replies
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@mdiluz when you mention hosting the full channel data a user joins do you mean local or any external channel too?
@maikel external channels. The way federation works in Matrix is that the homeserver you connect to is the one serving you channels, even if those channels are on other servers. This generally means that a homeserver has to "host" the data and messages in those channels too.
Fwiw though others have clarified in the replies that you can tweak this a little and it can be less of an issue in practice!
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Here's hoping all that was useful to someone. I spent some time looking for a thread/post/blog like this when I first went searching, but couldn't find it, so here's me paying it forward for the next person.
For others reaching the end of this thread I want to call out the wonderful and similar work over on this blog post: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
Goes into a bunch more detail and has different priorities to me so may well fit your needs better.
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@maikel external channels. The way federation works in Matrix is that the homeserver you connect to is the one serving you channels, even if those channels are on other servers. This generally means that a homeserver has to "host" the data and messages in those channels too.
Fwiw though others have clarified in the replies that you can tweak this a little and it can be less of an issue in practice!
@mdiluz I can imagine the issue with this.
Btw thanks for the explanation. I had no idea it worked the same as Mastodon, caching everything before it reaches you.
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@zeank hadn't heard of it but will be checking it out!
@zeank I've given it a tinker and it seems like self-hosting is quite involved.
The public instance is fascinating, but I'm also not sure what Movim really *is*. Like it's simultaniously chat and a news aggregator?
Do you use it? Would love to hear from folks who do.
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@zeank I've given it a tinker and it seems like self-hosting is quite involved.
The public instance is fascinating, but I'm also not sure what Movim really *is*. Like it's simultaniously chat and a news aggregator?
Do you use it? Would love to hear from folks who do.
@mdiluz for most parts it’s a feature rich, modern XMPP client. That amongst others focuses on good UX regarding chatrooms and offers A/V calls on top of that. And yes, it also has those blogging, news aggregator features. They plan to introduce a concept of „spaces“, which comes close to what Discord offers, a community space, a collection of rooms etc (yet to be defined what exactly it will be).
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@mdiluz for most parts it’s a feature rich, modern XMPP client. That amongst others focuses on good UX regarding chatrooms and offers A/V calls on top of that. And yes, it also has those blogging, news aggregator features. They plan to introduce a concept of „spaces“, which comes close to what Discord offers, a community space, a collection of rooms etc (yet to be defined what exactly it will be).
@mdiluz And yes, it’s on the heavy side, which is why I’m not hosting it myself at this point. I’d have to upgrade my machine first. Personally I prefer just slim, regular XMPP clients. They do all I need already.
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For others reaching the end of this thread I want to call out the wonderful and similar work over on this blog post: https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
Goes into a bunch more detail and has different priorities to me so may well fit your needs better.
@mdiluz Thank you for the list! I'd like to bring your attention to Fluxer, which is a clone of Discord. Like, almost identical. And they have their own version of Nitro but at the old price point of Nitro when Discord started.
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@maswan I'm kind of surprised a fork hasn't popped up tbh. Anyway yeah thanks for the info?
@maswan Curious if you can help - I booted up a self-hosted RC instance and didn't really get a chance to sign up to a plan or not, but it's very unclear to me which "plan" I'm on, and the admin page shows only 50 "seats" available.
Any idea how to use the "Community" plan?
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@maswan Curious if you can help - I booted up a self-hosted RC instance and didn't really get a chance to sign up to a plan or not, but it's very unclear to me which "plan" I'm on, and the admin page shows only 50 "seats" available.
Any idea how to use the "Community" plan?
@maswan tbf might be that https://github.com/RocketChat/rocketchat-compose doesn't allow the "community" edition easilt
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@mdiluz Thank you for the list! I'd like to bring your attention to Fluxer, which is a clone of Discord. Like, almost identical. And they have their own version of Nitro but at the old price point of Nitro when Discord started.
@coffeegm nice, first I've heard. I'll.check it out and add to the thread
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@coffeegm nice, first I've heard. I'll.check it out and add to the thread
@coffeegm well I have to say this is one of the most fishy things a website has ever asked me
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@coffeegm well I have to say this is one of the most fishy things a website has ever asked me
@mdiluz Oof, I haven't tried accessing the website from a mobile device so that's the first time I've seen it too. Weird.
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@darkuncle it's an interesting point for sure. I think the management of multiple channels (most of the time 10+) is quite key. That's kind of what separates these tools out from Signal, Telegram, Threema, etc.
@mdiluz I miss IRC sometimes, but I really do like the introduction of GIFs, reactions, etc. that have made chat a richer experience in the past 30 years
