Discord Alternatives.

I have had a Discord account since October 19th 2015. It completely transformed how I spoke with friends on the internet. Before discord we used a bunch of different small voice and text platforms. I remember using a combination of Skype, Ventrillo, Teamspeak, Mumble and mIRC. All of these platforms had various strengths and weaknesses. Skype was sluggish and used a lot of resources on my computer. Yet, that did not matter since it was free. My friends and I had a Skype call that was active for weeks if not months at a time. We ended up using it because none of us wanted to pay for Ventrillo or Teamspeak anymore. Ventrillo was the cheaper of the two but it was super limited in features. I paid a hearty fee of $5.99 in my lawn mowing money to host my own vent server. Eventually, we moved to a self hosted Teamspeak server hosted by someone we played with. Sadly, that server up and vanished one day and the owner went dark. That is why we ended up using Skype. Even though Mumble was still an option at the time. None of us wanted to install it.

I'd mostly given up on the concept of group chats since I had stopped playing multiplayer games by late 2014. I had replaced that source of social interaction online with Reddit discussions and Twitch chats. I myself was building a small community on Twitch and was keeping multiplayer games as far from reach as possible. When I first heard about Discord I was skeptical. How could something be as useful as Teamspeak but not cost an arm and a leg? While being more reliable than an IRC client. After a little bit of convincing I took the plunge and was an early adopter during the Discord beta period. The positives were instantly obvious, When I went live I'd share my stream. People tuned in and chat took off instantly. Instead of having to wait for minutes if not hours for my humble audience of 5 to tune in and start talking. As of 2026 I manage five different Discord servers. I talk in a few dozen with relative frequency and my primary Discord server sits at 3600 members with 300+ weekly users chatting.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. In 2023 Discord announced it was sun setting the Partner program after a significant cull in partners that started in 2021. Since I was an early Discord partner I feel that I provided a huge amount of free marketing for the platform in exchange for some of the most important community building and networking I have done in my career online. Since ending that program Discord has made changes that have started leaving an increasing bitter taste in my mouth. From their questionable monetization options to the weird ways they are using your data. They'd attempted other strange things in the past such as when they tried to compete with steam.

It is a well known fact that if a platform is free then you are the product. Data is a high value product and aesthetic monetization is just icing on the money cake. With Discord dreaming of becoming publicly traded I expect this anxiety to get worse. It is a fact that people like me have a say in the future of the internet and what people use to connect. Ethically building a community without promoting platforms that I feel are not being fair with their user base is something that is becoming increasingly important in my decision making. Its a primary reason I moved away from Twitter and focused on Bluesky and mastodon. It's why I started this blog and lowered my focus on Patreon. I want the same for my community that exists on Discord.

I have tested a number of different platforms. Every single option has issues. None of them fully fill the void that Discord would leave if there was an exodus. My goal in testing these platforms has been to find one that is close enough in feature set that includes a few specific requirements.

• Can be self hosted.
• Lets users easily download and delete their data.
• Clear policy on ID verification.
• Open Source.
• Not backed by venture capital.

Fluxer seems to tick off all these boxes. It recently launched in public beta at the start of 2026. https://fluxer.app/ Up until just a few weeks ago it was worked on by a solo developer from Sweden. Based on posts I've seen he has since hired a second developer. Like Discord, Fluxer has a subscription model. But this is made completely optional as servers that are self hosted are not limited by their free-mium limitations. Reading through their privacy policy it is professional and well thought out. Including clauses that'll keep it free and open. With logical policies with their plans for ID verification. Block the region and never block VPNs. Having passed my requirements I set up a server and have started playing around with it.

It feels familiar. But was initially a bit unstable. The platforms public server was not ready for the 150,000 reported sign ups that they have obtained since the end of Febuary. But they have since migrated to a much more robust infrastructure with many servers globally. While it will time out once in a while it is more or less reliable at this point. Moderation is comparable to Discord albeit a few years behind. Tools for people who manage servers seem robust and well thought out. It even has a few features I wish other platforms had. Such as the ability to link directly off platform.

Combine the well thought out familiar interface and the ability to self host and full control of your data. Fluxer seems to be the most likely replacement for Discord as the platform slowly enshittifys. If you want to join my space on Fluxer. You can do that by simply clicking this link. I'll still be on discord for the foreseeable future. But I think its completely irresponsible to not have a backup plan when you rely on a closed platform as the place for your community.

This is a subject I have been thinking about for a while now. The first alternative protocol I tried and tested was Matrix. It is a privacy focused protocol that allows users to build apps on top of it. This leads to a lot of confusion. You might know of Matrix as Fluffychat or Element. Both are chat apps that are built on top of Matrix. But why did I shy away from these as an option? The first reason was complexity and confusion. It is extremely open and that leads to a lot of conflicting apps. Not every client works on every system. They don't all play nice with one another. Moderation is an absolute mess. Matrix is a largely peer to peer network, with a central account server. You could host your own account server but then people need to specifically sign up for your app. Moderation is handled on a room to room basis. Because instead of every server being a singular thing. Every room that is linked to a space are all separate parts on the larger network. Meaning if someone posts a rude image in room A and you ban them they will still be able to post in room B an C. This requires the server moderation team to script their own banning rules. Combine this with a large selling point of Matrix being fully end to end encrypted. Means the level of trolling people are willing to commit can be a bit grim. It is a cool platform that is complex and over my head in a lot of ways. Not likely to be a good fit for a community of my scale. I could see myself using it for a small group of friends. But that is about it.

The other two options I looked at were Teamspeak, Stoat and Root. Teamspeak was quickly skipped over due to expensive hosting costs. Its just not my use case. Stoat seemed like an option initially. It ticked some of my boxes. Open source, self hosting is an option and it had a simple user interface. Quickly I ran into stability issues and after doing a bit of investigating into the maintainers. I saw a lot of immaturity and noticed a lack of coherent goals and communication. They were also in the middle of a rebrand and were changing the name of the platform from Revolt to Stoat. Thanks to a cease and desist. The nail in the coffin for me is the complete lack of real moderation ability on servers and no clear way to delete your own data off the platform.

I have seen a few people talking about Root I went to the website and attempted to install it. I was not able to get it working on my Debian system. I decided to test it using the web ui instead. While it feels like a really developed option the platform is funded by venture capital and has no clear path to delete your user data and no ability to self host. I don't see the point in using a less developed platform with all the same caveats as Discord when I am trying to get away from those issues in the first place.

tl;dr. Here is a link to my Fluxer instance. https://fluxer.gg/l1Dz3hcT

I am working on a few video projects right now. I plan to stream Tuesday - Thursday. I'm considering streaming on Friday but it depends on how much progress editing I am able to complete this week.