My only resistance to leaving discord is that it’s where 99% of my gaming communities are. There’s no way I’m convincing hundreds of people to move off to something I self host, or to self host themselves. It’s just not feasible.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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I like xmpp, but it is not a discord alternative. It is a WhatsApp / Signal / iMessage alternative.
It doesn't have 80% of discord features, I use discord a lot and I don't have a single group chat.
Matrix / Element is a way better alternative feature wise.
The ever continuing trend of foss enthusiasts having less then no fuckinf clue the FUCK normal people use computers for.
Xmpp is great but you are 100% right. It's not a discord replacement. It never will be. It is court replacement and it is not trying to be a discord replacement. People need to stop trying to force it to be one. The same thing goes with matrix though to a lesser extent.
Matrix at least is trying to be a team's replacement, which is a legitimate alternative to what discord does for the average user.
Matrix has a whole host of other problems that will make and never be a viable alternative. But none of them are technical in nature. It's mostly just the fragmentation will nature of it. And how confusing it is to navigate.
At the moment the only two legitimate replacement options are stoat and fluxer. Stoat is a dead end and unluckly to go anywhere. While fluxer is only like 2 weeks into its open beta just released its code base to the public after a long-ass time of closed development. And barely has enough funding even with their Kickstarter thing. Fluxer has passed 100,000 user Mark already and growing.
It's also the only thing that's actually trying to be an app for your average user. It's actually targeting the same demographic discord was.
Which matters a lot. Matrix xmpp all these other things aren't targeting the same demographic. They are not trying to be a replacement. I mean, I'm sure they're happy to scoop up some new users and help expand their reach a little bit who doesn't want to see their project grow after all.
But all these people trying to push matrix xmpp and what not is like going to a construction site telling a worker. Hey, your pickup truck is old and s***** you should stop using it and go use this nice moped while they look at you. Like you're a f****** retard as they have to lug around a ton and a half of materials and tools everyday in the moped. Why perfectly good means of conveyance will do the job better than the pickup truck as the purpose of a vehicle cannot fully fulfill the same role that the pickup truck fills.
This was voice dictated if the grammar is f***** up. Sorry my brain don't work too good sometimes
The main complaints about Matrix I've heard though are about behind the scenes stuff rather than features, which the video touches on:
But there are some reasons why I think XMPP is superior. In Matrix, when you join a room, your server downloads and stores the entire history of that room. If someone on a federated server posts illegal content in a room you're in, your server is now hosting it, and you are liable. Whereas in XMPP, messages are relayed in real time. Group chat, MU history stays on your server hosting that room. So your server only stores messages for your users which means that no content caching there is no content caching from other servers. This is a fundamental architectural difference which makes the XMPP protocol better in my opinion.
Personally I don't know that much about it but I briefly looked into what it would take to write a client for Matrix a few years ago and it seemed pretty daunting to work with. Maybe it would be possible to write software that implements more Discord features on top of XMPP to have something that works more smoothly.
Funny enough there is a layer for discord like stuff adding into https://movim.eu/ which relies on the backed of an XMPP server.
i quite liked element as a replacement for whatsapp and discord when i got a few people to switch. just had too much stability issues at the time and they went back. will never get them to switch again...even with ads and age verification crap going on.
The matrix protocol is a tremendous mess
Element is still as buggy as ever, unfortunately…
The only realistic alternative I've found so far is Fluxer, and that one is still in Beta. Very promising though.
It broke 100,000 users and growing. The $300,000 the dev raised with his backer Kickstarter thing really is going to get stretched thin really quick with how fast it's growing.
He's already had to roll out more servers a few times to my understandings too. Well, self-hosting is currently a thing. It's still under active development in that really needs to finish up quick to help offload some of the load.
Honestly, once the mobile app is finished and the self-hosting is more stable, it's basically going to be like the old days of TeamSpeak 3 s when everyone actually liked it.
But with all the modern conveniences and benefits of discord.
It is the only thing currently going around. That's actually trying to be a replacement for discord. Keyword replacement not alternative.
Like xmpp is an alternative, not a replacement.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| TCP | Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP |
| UDP | User Datagram Protocol, for real-time communications |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging |
| nginx | Popular HTTP server |
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #120 for this comm, first seen 26th Feb 2026, 20:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Great bot
I want something that works like Discord for my gaming group (~120 people) and is self-hostable with a single „docker-compose up -d“.
But I started looking regularly for alternatives, and we will get there :)
Mattemost? Rocketchat?
Closest your going to get is fluxer. It unfortunately only just entered open beta. So the self host option while there... Is not simple yet.
Tho it's on the road map.
Nothing will ever be just "docker compose up" but checkout movim. I think it's good. Haven't used it myself yet.
It's not quite as simple as a single docker compose, but the Element Server Suite for hosting a matrix home server (synapse) was fairly simple to get working.
I'm already self-hosting a XMPP and a Matrix server, just in case. A shame that most of the group chats I've found there are about free software, assorted geekery, but not much of what I'd usually find on Discord - hopefully that changes in a few years.
Unlikely. They make for poor discord community replacements. There's just too much complexity at the door.
Most things are looking towards fluxer as the replacement. Since it's actually a discord replacement unlike xmpp or matrix. Which are alternatives not replacements.
Plant the first seed and create those groups.
Fair that! Only problem is, I don't have any acquaintances, but if I ever fix that, then maybe we can work on that.
This is always the problem. Internet folk are normal now, they dont have tech skills. In ye olden time we were used to irc and mumble and had no problem switching to other clients if needed. Now people freak out that they need to make a new account somewhere else to leave discord and good luck explaining something like Matrix to them!
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What's Lemmy's opinion on Fluxer?
I love it and use it daily. Once it becomes stable, gets a docker container and documents the self-hosting flow, it will rule the universe.
You're not bothered by the plutonium stuff? Would you still host it if the plutonium features were still there in the self hosted version? (as in your self hosted instance paying them for plutonium on your servers)
I'm not sure what the reason for this theoretical is when it's already documented that self-hosted instances have full free access to the paid perks.
It's become pretty clear since all of this kicked off that none of the Discord-replacement hopefuls have the infrastructure to accept even the smallest fraction of users fleeing Discord. Paying for some nice-to-have features when using the official instance is at least a plan towards paying for that infrastructure.
Speaking on a more broad level, I find it more suspicious when services are free these days with no path to self-sufficient monetization. We've seen enough of those fall to venture capital influence at this point.
Thank you, that's a very interesting perspective. I wasn't aware of the plutonium thing.
That might be the stupidest fucking statement ever.
Your basically asking if unicorns shit gold would you take the unicorn poop.
It's nonsensical. It doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. Anyone can make up b******* hypotheticals to make something sound bad. It's still b*******.
Why the fuck would anyone give a fuck about the plutonium stuff? Kick starters, investment backing, and crowd funding are all standard ways to generate initial revenue. It's a f****** company. It needs money to buy hardware in paper server costs. Development isn't free and if you want people to work full-time on something you have to get this pay them.
He basically asked for $300k to start full-time development and Kickstart the company after he left closed development. He provided a full proof of service documentation in history of his closed development.
The only people who have any issue with the plutonium stuff are those who are either too f****** retarded to understand basic business or a too far up their own asses to think that everything should be free in life.
If you self-host you don't have to pay f****** wild concept considering how many self-toast services actually charge you money for full service. So that alone is already one up on a lot of stuff.
A basic subscription is far more reliable than donations if you want a company to be able to actually function. A subscription provides a reliable income so you can actually plan your costs and budgets. It's a far better option than microtransactions that discord seems to want to push.
Cuz again server costs and vitamin costs aren't free. Remember FOSS stands for free as in freedom to do what you want with the software within the license not free as in it doesn't cost you f****** anything.
If fluxer had come out of the gate with no proof of concept, no history. No explanation of the credentials of the developer. No business license and no source code on demonstration and just said hey. Trust me bro. I need 300 Grand then. Yeah it would be an issue. But lo and behold the reality is none of that's true.
Could it all go poof belly up and a month time 2 months a year? Yes of course, small businesses die all the time. 300K is not a lot of money for a small business. Frankly, the fact he only asked for $300k is more of a red flag than he asked for money at all. Cuz he's going to have to pull a lot f****** more money if you wants to do anything remotely clothes to what his goal is. If he had shot for a 500k 600k somewhere in that vicinity. I would personally be more trusting than him asking for $300k. Much more than 600k and I would start asking questions as that's a little bit much for a initial investment backing.
Seriously, the more I look around on Lemmy the more, I think that nobody here seems to actually understand that s*** costs money.
Weird to censor yourself like the swear words are the ugly parts of your long winded hostile rants.
You sound upset, you should talk to someone about that.
I've seen this posted several times and this is the second time I've tried to access their self-hosting docs and get a 404. Where's everyone going for installation instructions?
Googling I got their docs and a github for running through docker, the docs which are empty, and the docker that has the help of claude code.
I try to not poo poo folks working on projects too much, but like why am I here over XMPP or Matrix?
That github looks like a fork of the original code. I never heard of fluxer so I can't really trust it since I've only ever heard people gathering opinions rather than reviews, a fork even less so. So for my honest opinion, it's a no for me since it seems like a very round about way to onboard anyone who wants to self-host.
Since we're here, I've tried giving stoat.chat a go and got it semi-working but the way they have the project set up, there's a lot of optional "bloat" that gets tacked on from the build.
What I had success with, was Continuwuity. Their docs were so good, I was not only able to set up chat but also new and legacy voice and video under 4 hours.
Yeah that is yucky, seems like self hosting hasn't really been at the forefront of intention for the project. From the looks of it, them being in Sweden it might have started as a "buy EU" sort of discord clone that was pulled into the death of discord conversation with the ID stuff.
Interesting times 🫠
Curious your thoughts on stoat, that came out of revolt correct? What sorts of bloat did you find?
4 is definitely a good benchmark for self hosting! lol Have you run Synapse, and how did that compare?
Sorry for the later reply, was working (oops, not really). From what I read, Stoat is just a rename of Revolt and the platform should really remain the same (when I had this up, some of the UI still read Revolt).
For the bloat, as a self-hoster (speaking for myself and not on the behalf of anyone else), you should try to be provided with the most direct solution to a specific issue. When looking at Stoat, and the output of the generate_config.sh, they basically shove down a whole lot of solution at one time. There's from what I can tell, 15 different configurations for containers, over half of them are static versions and who knows how they all intermingle between the configs (Jesus, that's a lot of config files). This produces a monstrous web of configuration that I really have no time to digest and get working for something I'm just 'playing around with'. All this and I didn't even attempt to integrate voice and video. Also (as a nitpick) requires you to spin up caddy but has a config to point to that to a different reverse-proxy if needed (I already had nginx proxy manager and got this working but the whole thing fails if you don't spin up caddy. insert sad horse noises).
This is where Continuwuity comes in, I have 4 containers that I have bespoke configured myself by reading the configs and 2 config files that I hand made based off the docs. I feel WAYYYY better at hosting this than Stoat. Even got the wife to help test the video and voice and it works great with Element. From start to end, took me 4-ish hours to be done.
I have hosted Synapse before and got it up and running but not with voice and video. IMO, it's a little bloaty as well (not nearly as bad as Stoat) but it's doable. Never attempted voice and video for this but again, Continuwuity is just much more straightforward and less overhead.
No worries, thank you for the detailed reply!
Sounds like a solid way to do it, and a support the uwuification of all software, so that's an extra bonus! Might have to futz around with it and see what sort of mess I can get myself into.
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It's a new project (as far as I can tell it just went public a few weeks ago) they have exploded in popularity in the last week and they are amid migrating their backed hosting provider ATM, they have been having service interruptions for the last couple of days
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- Self-hosting guide appears missing
- Other guides have crazy writing errors
- Setup looks convoluted.
What I've seen makes me bet I could be dragging iso27002 out and marking all the rules it breaks. ..and the devs won't know what that means.
They're extremely new and open about what's missing though. Their plans apparently got somewhat thrown all over the place by the sudden extreme interest and quite a few things aren't yet in place (such as the self-hosting guide). Still works surprisingly well, and what they do goes into the right direction (no VC funding or investors, removal of the CLA, bound to GDPR, a full FOSS atack, etc).
I think generally more positive than negative, but hesitant. There are so many different competing apps and discord copies that have risen and fallen, it's hard to really get attached to any that have little movement in fighting the network effect.
Seeing it already has the beginnings of enshitification with freemium features, while federation is "in development", particularly in communities like lemmy the question become why pick this over something that already exists and is an open standard?
Like looking at the "plutonium" page, it's clear they want to copy the features of discord nitro, and if we are to fight the network effect fight with the energy of discord's recent fuck up, I would rather land on XMPP or Matrix, if I have any push.
There are so many different competing apps and discord copies that have risen and fallen, it’s hard to really get attached to any that have little movement in fighting the network effect.
In other words, you are saying that there is too much discord in this space?
Down with discord!
I'm starting a new app called Concordance, and it will only bridge between different apps no matter where they are from 😤
Let me save you a few keystrokes, there's already an app called Matterbridge: github.com/42wim/matterbridge
The sentiment I keep seeing is that it's vibe coded, though the dev claims that AI was used but not in any core components. It's one I'll be waiting out personally, the whole huntarr situation has me pretty skeptical of any new projects
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