good because i heard there isnt a good alternative to discord.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Perfect 1:1 drop in hassle free replacement with the exact same feature set? No, there isn't.
Viable alternatives that aren't too bad to learn? There are many.
That's just gives Fluxer more time to prepare for the switch 👍
That's what my community is doing. We're going to move to Matrix just to be rid of Discord and then seeing what we want to do next.
Programmers with thigh-high striped socks should still take one for the team and work on Fluxer. Seriously!
Delays
not cancels, rolls back, stops or retracts. Delay is just doing something later than expected. This will not bring people back or change their minds.
Absolutely
Even if it was "cancel" that would just be a slightly longer delay.
Delaying in hopes that people forget
But a true easy to use discord alternative is still not there.
For chat: IRC, Stoat, Fluxer, Root, Zulip, Matrix, Slack, Teams, Guilded.
For voice/video: Mumble, Teamspeak, Jitsi Meet, also several of the above.
wdym there's been good alternatives to Discord for decades.
This is just not true at all, only recently have alternatives started to spring up that even get close to the number of features and level of polish that discord has (note, discord still has plenty of issues, I'm not saying its perfect)
I'm in the process of migrating my community to Stoat (formerly Revolt). It's janky as all balls because new platform, but it's going well.
Fluxer exists and is a near 1:1 drop in replacement.
It's current only real problem is the servers are overloaded. But it has a self host option to bypass that very problem.
A bigger problem than a technical alternative is convincing all of your friends to switch.
There are multiple other programs that fill a similar niche, but I don't know I'll be able to get everyone I know to change over.
I definitely will discontinue using Discord if they deploy this surveillance state bullshit, but a little bit sad over the number of gaming buddies I'll lose contact with in the process.
If they choose not to switch, then that's on them. Eventually enough people will start migrating that stragglers will also start to follow.
It will take a while for a full on replacement to be viable. People need move to this kind of stuff with friends and small groups for now. As time goes on, the infrastructure and community momentum will build out and make moving feasible for larger groups, though. That's to say, if you've got a massive Discord server with 10 thousand people, 100 different channels, and complex bots, you can't simply knee jerk move it overnight without destroying the community. Number one, the community has to want to move. A switch of that nature starts with people using other options alongside Discord. When there's enough people using something else, there needs to be a good plan laid out for how to build out the new server and make the switch seamless for the users.
I think it looks promising, but it's still very early days. Hopefully they can gain more traction.
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TeamSpeak 6 and Stoat? Didn't use the second one.
ts6 has poor Linux support currently.
Hopefully it's improved soon.
It hasn't improved in two years. It's not going to. Teamspeak developers are slower than Wayland's.
The matrix protocol is actually easy to use, it just takes a bit of effort to get into. Once you're in, then it's as easy as Discord, I haven't had any issues and it's been a great learning experience. https://joinmatrix.org/
This is bullshit. I'm sorry. I've tried signing up on like three servers with Element Classic and Element X and all of them fail. Maybe I've just gotten incredibly unlucky with the instances I've picked, but it's been a much tougher time than joining Lemmy was.
I have an old matrix.org account I can use, but it's asking me to get something from a currently logged in session, which I don't have any. I saved all the files and phrases it asked me to when I joined originally, but it isn't enough. There's a possibility I missed one, but the fact that I do have a file and phrase saved in my password manager is evidence I was saving what it asked me to.
If worst comes to worst I can just use matrix.org, but I know that Matrix's "federated but de facto centralized" problem is much worse than Lemmy's (lemmy.world is big but not a majority, but I think a majority of people use matrix.org) and I'm trying to help fix that.
It's just frustrating. I want Matrix to be the Discord replacement but it's a pain in the ass currently. And Discord is so many things to do many people. It's voice for some, streaming for some, and for a lot it's the fact that it's DMs, rooms, servers, voice, and streaming all in one and with a very large user base. Matrix, to my knowledge, is only rooms, servers (or more properly spaces in Matrix, since they have real servers), and DMs. Back when I used it more frequently it wasn't super active. Especially for really niche activities. And don't even get me started on the state of NSFW matrix, I went down that rabbit hole and one of the top results was MAP stuff (pedophiles). There's also just a huge amount of furry stuff, which isn't inherently a problem, but when it seems like there's dozens of NSFW furry rooms and a top result on search is talking about which servers and rooms are sympathetic to pedophiles and the folks most likely to be leaving Discord are the ones who were doing NSFW things because that's what's actually age restricted I can't really evangelize Matrix as a good replacement.
This sort of turned into more of a rant than I intended. It's just frustrating.
(Edit: Also, to be clear, I'm not saying it's Matrix's fault pedophile apologists use it or that it's a top result, I'm just expressing frustration with the situation.)
there are "spaces" now which is a collection of rooms, which is a pretty good analogue for discord "servers"
I may not have been clear, I just meant that "Discord servers" are not "servers" in the way the word is actually used (meaning a computer) and that Matrix instances actually are real "servers". But yeah, spaces are like Discord servers.
Matrix, to my knowledge, is only chats, servers (or more properly rooms in Matrix, since they have real servers), and DMs.
I was responding to this
Ohh I see, I'll edit
There is a bunch of stuff that can become an alternative, if the users will come.
Alright, stoat or revolt or anyone else, you've got 6 months. I'll move my group over in 6 months and donate to the best solution. Thanks everyone for pushing back against discord, to the indie devs who are working on alternatives, and to the self-hosting community for making it possible for me to even plan to move off of discord.
And why not to give Matrix a chance? Stoat (named Revolt before), Fluxer or anything else that is centralised is going to end up doing the same.
Because the user experience of Matrix is poor and not currently a sufficient Discord replacement.
Fluxer isn't entirely centralized. It has self hosting support.
It's quasi centralized pretty much the same as matrix.
You can just opt to not use the central server for hosting services.
What?
I don't think you know what centralization/decentralization means.
On matrix, you scan spin up a server/instance and communicate with any other matrix server/instance. On Fluxer, if you self-host, and your friend also self-hosts, your instance/server cannot communicate with your friend's instance/server. You would have to create an account on your friend's instance/server and vice-versa. You would also, probably, have to be running two clients in order to chat in both servers/instances.
Federation of self-hosted servers is on the Fluxer road map.
However, the team has had massive growth in the last two weeks and pulled enough visibility that assholes being assholes decided that it would be fun to DDoS them while also dealing with sudden growth.
Fluxer's majn benefits are that it is so close to discord that it, in theory, supports existing Discord bots with minimal effort, and the kid behind it is obsessed with the tech stack and FOSS.
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They're delaying it by six months. They're banking on this blowing over by then. Fuck discord.
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