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Most Discord alternatives fail not on tech, but on polish. Signal → private but bad for communities Matrix → flexible but rough UX XMPP → powerful but fragmented Discord → centralized but frictionless Users pick frictionless every time. We probably don’t need new apps or protocols we need a client that works well.
IRC → perfection, impossible to improve
This does miss a major feature of Discord and why, imo, it got such an huge following among gamers at first: voice and video chat. I've really had a hard time finding a Discord alternative that has the same kind of first-class voice and video chat support that Discord does. Back to Ventrilo and Mumble I guess /s
Matrix is the only one that offers the killer feature of Discord, which is being able to join many communities from a single login. Sadly Matrix has never had a good UX for me. IMO they spent too many complexity tokens on e2ee and there are simply not enough left.
What is your greatest UX concern that you would like to see fixed?
can someone please try running the experiment of "but what if just forking&spinning up an OSS clone, scaling up to take in the migrants, acquire network effects, collect roughly same subscription revenue, but run on just, like, 10 people?" Discord has a financially and politically vulnerable posture that is downstream of having to operate a very large team, raise funding, be exposed to investor market pressure. Howev…
Curious what prompted this verdict. My only experience with Revolt/Stoat has been with the Handmade Cities instance, but said experience hasn't been anywhere near as bad as this writeup seems to suggest.
There is zero chance that the target users for Discord is going to try anything more complicated than Discord, so basically all the entries in this list. I recoil in horror thinking about me explaining Matrix even to the most tech savvy friends I use Discord with and I really really hope people would stop recommending it.
> Functionality: can it do everything required of a platform for building, organizing, and sustaining a community?
Feels like these are two different things.
What I expect from a Discord alternative is text messaging, voice and video call with screensharing, both possible on community spaces and with personal contacts in a way that is extremely easy to setup.
Ironically, Signal actually ranks a -1 for privacy in this use. Presumably you're already using Signal and getting mainstream contacts to start using it too. You probably have a basic profile that at least includes your real name, and might also have your picture. Maybe you're even one of the 7 people in the world that use the Stories feature in it. Well good news, now all of that is also unconditionally available to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IRC → perfection, impossible to improve
isn't IRC only Text? What about the Voice Chat?
I'm not sure if any client has solve this, but what about image / video / file hosting? You can't just drag 'n drop a image into a chat. You have to host it on a 3rd party site and link it.
I do wonder how server management is now adays. In Discord you can host your own server with a few clicks and make it easy to adjust permissions and controls invites. I would assume IRC is also lacking behind. But would love to hear more about the current state.
Discord has invite links, where people without the app or account can quickly join. In IRC you have the IRC:// link, but that does not work for people who don't have a client installed. Then you can do a web client link, but that is not optimal for people who already have their favorite client set up :)