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Discord Alternatives, Ranked (taggart-tech.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] thesmokingman@programming.dev 14 points 1 week ago

It’s very important to call out this dude either doesn’t understand what a community is or comes from this new generation that thinks docs should be on Discord and not easily accessible.

Functionality: can it do everything required of a platform for building, organizing, and sustaining a community?

Somehow Discord gets a 4 there. A chat server is a community of a kind but it will never rise the level of a platform’s community because it is, by definition, somewhat ephemeral and just a bunch of chat logs. There’s a big difference for example between IRC and bash.org for things like AzureDiamond.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

Matrix uses a similar end-to-end cryptography scheme to Signal. "Rooms" (chats, channels) are not encrypted by default, b

I don't think that's true anymore. it has been encrypted by default for quite a few years now

[-] betahack@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

what are the best alternatives for non-tech folks to join and use?... because that's who I am going to have to convince

[-] ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago

Matrix is probably the most well funded and supported open source platform that might be able to compete with Discord but even then it’s not a fair fight.

Sadly most people won’t leave discord. People will forget about this next week.

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[-] neblem@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Not reviewed in this eval:

  • DeltaChat (though would likely score similar to Signal with more points for decentralization)
  • IRC
  • XMPP
  • Lemmy/PieFed/Nodebb (if he's going to include Discourse..)
[-] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

Some other alternatives not reviewed:

  • Spacebar
  • TeamSpeak
  • Root
[-] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Spacebar sounded really promising when I checked them out years ago.

The big Discord.com features currently left unimplemented or with partial implementations are: Voice/Video support (WebRTC protocol support implemented, but lacking UDP protocol implementation)

Unfortunately, seems like it’s still not at a point where it could cover basic Discord functionality.

Edit: I should be clear, I’m not trying to discourage it. I really hope it succeeds to the goal of parity with Discord! Love to hear from someone who has used it a bit.

[-] SparkleVoid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Why is SimpleX not mentioned anywhere in the article or the comments here? I thought it is similar to Discord. Am I wrong?

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[-] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

Top three are:

  1. Discourse
  2. Rocket.chat
  3. Matrix
[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 9 points 1 week ago

I don't really see how someone can position Discourse as the number one Discord alternative. Surely most people looking to ditch Discord want live chat, audio/video calls, and screen sharing... Or am I just in the minority here?

For the record, I think Discourse looks awesome and even thinking about how I might use it for a project, but I do not see it as a Discord alternative.

[-] markz@suppo.fi 7 points 1 week ago

Lots of communities use discord as a replacement for a forum despite it not being fit for it at all

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Sure, but that’s not an argument for replacing Discord with forums. The two serve entirely different use cases, and should be treated like two entirely separate products.

[-] gloktawasright@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Isn’t it though? A forum wouldn’t do all the things discord does, but the argument is that trying to use discord for a forum was a mistake in the first place. So replacing discord with a forum and then a dedicated chatting app makes sense, no?

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[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I mean, for at least the first five letters, I can't even tell the difference.

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[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

I love that Discourse is open. I hate that it's just horrendous from a usability perspective. Flarum is much better than that, in my opinion, while being way more flexible. Examples:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/

https://orionfeedback.org/

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[-] Ontimp@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

Rocket.chat uses Matrix though, too. It's not only Matrix but it makes use of Matrix federation among other things and they built their own Matrix server implementation in TypeScript last year

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[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Trash guide to be fair.

Discord has more functionality than all of these, that's why it's in the position it's in today, yet it gets ranked lower than... Rocket chat??

If we're objectively finding alternatives then we need to be objective, this guide seems sus AF.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 2 points 1 week ago

Discord got popular because it's centralized and pretty

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[-] Creegz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I am getting flashbacks of the mid-2000's IM landscape. Soon we'll be using 10 services bundled into some hackjob app that doesn't support all of the features but keeps the chats in one place.

[-] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Hey... Trillian was awesome.

[-] Creegz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Lmao that is the exact program that came to mind.

[-] amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

We need to bring back the forum platforms. That is how communities looked and it was great

[-] baatliwala@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Discord became big because of the seamless audio / video / screen sharing. Forums are not even in the same stratosphere.

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[-] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I just set up mybb board a few weeks ago for old times sake. Brought back so many memories.

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[-] Strider@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

No, he hasn't been running a discord server. It's a channel. Discord is running the servers.

[-] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago

God, I hated that terminology when I needed to talk with people about discord.

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I can only assume it's on purpose so average users really understand it wrong to avoid the associated negative view. Clever, really. But absolutely evil.

[-] izax@pawb.social 2 points 1 week ago

This wasn't intended to be misleading. The term "Server" as in a Discord Server is because, be fore Discord were the days of Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. For many of us gamers used to have to run or pay for their own actual server to have that kind of functionality. Then we'd combine direct calling with Skype for small groups and video. The term made sense at the time, but hasn't held up to the test of time. Basically Discord solved a problems of having to pay for those servers, and having to use two separate programs.

[-] jcorvera@quokk.au 1 points 1 week ago

The older terminology, which is still used in the API, was a lot better.

It was Guild. It was a Discord Guild. Probably because Stanislav was working on it after he abandoned Guildwork.

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[-] nil@piefed.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It seems there's also Spacebar.

https://piefed.ca/post/515452

[-] rainbowbunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but I tried multiple times to sign up for spacebar/Fermi and it just didn't go through. Do they block VPN's for signups or certain privacy browsers?

I've not had an issue with signing up for any other FOSS sites with my setup. Just curious if anyone else was having this issue

[-] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If Stoat (formerly Revolt) can integrate screen sharing capabilities soon enough, they will be the closest, user-friendly experience to Discord. Even the UI is familiar, if you come from Discord.

[-] neshura@bookwyr.me 2 points 1 week ago

Apparently that's already in the backend since december, they're just getting their infrastructure up to snuff before they enable it

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[-] WraithGear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

i notice people not mentioning team speak 6. when our discord group were planning everything team speak 6 seemed to be the winner. it’s not free, but if i am hosting it with a license and have more control over the experience, then its not that big of a deal. from what i gather team speak 6 has better faster audio, and a better screen share for gaming. but we only just started poking around at options atm.

[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

My friend group also jumped to that first, unless it's federated though it's not going to be "like discord" enough in the long run.

Part of what makes discord so good to many is that it's one app where you can connect to various different friend groups/modding groups/artists/etc...

Matrix does allow that with its federation model, ts6 does not 🤷

[-] weedee@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

https://s3nd.chat/

Made by the same team that did s3nd.pics (the imgur alternative. Under heavy Dev at the moment but has promise.

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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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