To all the people saying stoat: how do you cope with the lack of audio notifications? It's really bugging the shit out of me that it doesn't have them, cause I keep missing everything my chat partners say
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Looked around for a while now, these are the alternatives I found.
- Zulip: More like a Slack alternative for an organization/team/group, can be self hosted, seems to be pretty mature and well made. Has good client apps. No screen sharing/voice chat.
- Stoat: Seems to be mostly similar to Discord, doesn't seem mature though, self hosting documentation doesn't seem refined, could be okay if you use their server, not sure about mobile apps
- Spacebar: 1:1 Discord clone, voice chat features seem to be incomplete but seems pretty good otherwise, I tried to install their server but it doesn't run for me..
- Matrix: Feature complete, but kinda buggy, may work well enough for some but my friends complained for poor UX
- Mattermost: Gotta self host or pay, there seems to be some weird limitation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861331 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594673
- IRC: maybe not for non-techies, but IRCv3 has some "modern" features and Goguma(Android)/TheLounge(Web) looks quite decent
- XMPP: Seems like it should be good, but I'm having trouble setting it up so can't tell
- Tailchat: UI looks just like Discord, but I just heard of it now so haven't tried
Ive spent hours configuring stoat and spacebar and I have to say they are absolutely not ready for self hosting. They also lack vital features my friends and I use, like high quality screensharing or video.
I'm trying my hand at matrix, but it's rife with problems too. If you want high throughput video, you need to set up Jitsi alongside. I haven't been having a good time.
So Stoat has screensharing but only with low quality? Looking into self hosting it
It seems to be a bit "bleeding edge" at the moment, and the instructions for self-hosting are not really sufficient (at least for me).
I did the same search today and found out that teamspeak just got updated to a more “modern” UI and feature set. While it is still proprietary software, it’s more feature complete than a lot of the other FOSS alternatives.
it seems like they're using matrix under the hood
I'm downvoting everyone who suggests stoat because it means you haven't tried your recommendations or looked at git.
Jitsi, Matrix, Simplex and Mumble all work well.
For matrix use one of the newer clients like element X or schildi next.
Simplex is the most secure but also newest and least optimized / mature.
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I've seen stoat and matrix elsewhere recommended as alts too, but I'm always on board for an irc comeback
same, i see IRCv3 is pretty good on paper. it's pretty hard to find and configure it to work like discord with persistent history and file uploads though.. would be nice if i can convince my friends to switch over.
Probably worth adding a disclaimer with matrix, that if you self host, DON'T federate. Apparently their abuse management is awful and you get all kinds of shit sent to you which is hard to remove.
Hmmm, I'm hosting my matrix server for years with federation and never had this problem. The only spam I get is via the telegram bridge. Maybe it's a problem for bigger instances?! On mine are only ppl I have immediate contact with.
From what im seeing matrix and stoat. And both have their issues. But this feels kinda like the reddit api moment.
Stoat / revolt development has been as fraught as Tox. It's dead Jim.
Matrix, Simplex, Jitsi and Mumble all work.
For matrix on mobile use element X or Schildi next
I want to say Stoat... However I'm struggling to even create an account... And I have much more patience than my less-savvy friends.
If like me, you care less about servers and the "social media" aspect, and are just searching for group messaging, voice/video chat with screen-sharing capabilities, then Signal Desktop will suffice. That is what I'm preparing to suggest. You can now also sign up without a phone number which is a bonus.
That should work fine, at least until Stoat matures. As a bonus, doubles down as a replacement to Whatsapp: two birds, one stone.
Stoat are experiencing problems due to the large increase in numbers, marking them as spam. Until this is fixed, just contact their official support e-mail and they'll get you set up manually.
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Dont say stoat. Revolt failed and renamed to stoat instead of writing any code. The project is as mismanaged as Tox.
Your current options are:
Jitsi, Matrix, Simplex and Mumble
Thanks for the info on Stoat. Unfortunately, all those options either objectively aren't alternatives, or they have major limitations.
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Stoat is a worse disaster. None of your upvotes tried stoat.
Jitsi, matrix, simplex and mumble.
Matrix has client and metadata issues but holy shit is stoat unfinished trash. It's as fraught as Tox.
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We've been using Element (Matrix) for our household group chats and it has worked perfectly. That said, I do have a whole ass IT professional in-house to set up a dedicated server so I cannot speak to ease and such.
I think most people don't want to self host though. I can't speak to the ease of signing up and using the available public servers.
In terms of functionality as a chat program it's great.
I can't speak to the ease of signing up and using the available public servers.
I can speak to this. It has been fine. Your mileage may vary by server/host of course.
I would say Stoat, but right now they're getting hit with the mega hug of death and it usually takes a few hours for the email confirmation to show up, and every time I saw it I was too busy to see it before it expired.
No their email verification has never worked right. They have insanely strict filters on it to "prevent spammers".
I've been using Matrix for over a decade. It has its problems with stability, but it's getting better over time, especially with the newer Matrix 2.0 and Element X clients.
- Open source (clients and server)
- Federated
- Self hostable
- Optional E2EE for rooms, and I believe by default for PMs/DMs, along with forward secrecy
- Integration and bridging with other services, although it's not as seamless as I would like
- Has group calling/VC, but I don't use that enough to judge how good it is. Should also be able to integrate with Jitsi Meet as an alternative.
- Supports Spaces similar to Discord "servers", but not as seamless as Discord. Each room (equivalent to a Discord channel) is its own separate thing.
If an alternative isn't open source and doesn't support federation and E2EE, I wouldn't even consider it.
I tried it yesterday with a docker homeserver, it seems like if I log in from a new device all the previous chats are possibly lost if I can't verify the user?
Also user management seems to be a bit of a mess to me (although I didn't spend much time with that, so I could be wrong)
Correct. That is what forward secrecy is. That way, if a malicious/state actor gains access to your account, they won't be able to see your previous messages. If you cross-sign by verifying the new device with an old device, you will be able to decrypt those old messages.
This only applies to encrypted chats. Unencrypted chats' and rooms' history will be able to be accessed.
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Regarding matrix, what we have found is that the client you choose massively affects how usable it feels.
Something like Tammy is nice if you want to use matrix for 1-on-1 communication, but it's a pain if you want to have a Discord server-like structure.
If you want to mimic Discord server-like structure the best I found so far is Cinny. It's UI is very similar to Discord.
From everyone I heard is that you should keep away from Element. Their UI is bad.
I'd recommend Matrix. It's not perfect, but I dislike the alternatives more. Btw if you decide to give it a try, don't use matrix.org, it's too large of an instance which makes it slow and kind of ruins the decentralization aspect of it. tchncs.de seems like a good choice. I'd also love to give anyone in need of a matrix server a registration token, though registrations are not open on gregtech.eu, so contact me for a key if you'd like.
The only similar enough one that's also free is matrix. At least what I've found so far.
https://sharedown.kaffekod.nu/05c3716c-05fd-46f0-a90d-efdc6ee8c8a4 link will work for about a week.
I'm considering IRC and teamspeak3 instead
Edit: updated the link
Does Matrix do voice yet? If not, it's not a discord alternative - it's an IRC alternative
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many people from guilded went there after that shut down.
Not open source
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Stoat would be nice except its still a silo, you can self host your own silo but it doesnt federate, cant even use their offical app with self hosted instances. Upryzing seems like it might be going in a good direction but too early to know for sure.
Xmpp or matrix are the only truely decentralized options and neither is up for doing all the tasks discord gets used for.
The problem is many folks dont grasp the concept of doing one thing well over doing lots of things just sort of okay.
My suggestion to friends is figure out what discord features you actually care about and find apps that do those things. Muble for audio, obs to screen share, xmpp or matrix to chat, etc.
Like 90% of users, I care about voice chatting with my friends, having persistent chat sessions, being able to share videos and links, being able to share files, being able to share screens, and stream to my friends.
Yes. ALL of these features are important. Not "oh but you can chat using this app, and share files with this app, and stream with this other app". No. All those features listed. In a single app.
Until an alternative pops up that offers all of that, I refuse to accept the other "alternatives" listed as viable. They are not. There is a reason people moved from things like mumble and teamspeak to discord. Because discord offered more services at a higher level of convenience. I despise what discord is doing, but pretending like having to use multiple different programs to try and poorly accomplish what discord offers on its own would somehow be appealing to the majority of users is insane.
"Oh but these are decentraliz-" I. Do. Not. Give. A. Shit. Nor do the vast majority of discord users. Decentralization is fine and good, but it is so far down the list of priorities that it's worthless to talk about.
Man, people really prioritize convenience over all else, huh? We are fucking doomed.
This attitude is exactly why you and most people will be continuing to repeate this cycle of enshittification every 5 years or so.
You went from using multiple apps to a big clunky web browser that only connects to one service and you trust that service not to screw you over one day.
This is why we cant have nice things.
Dont some of these alternatives check all of those boxes? Eg Stoat and Matrix have persistent chat, file sharing, screensharing, and streaming dont they?
stoat aims for that but isn't stable. matrix needs jitsi for screen sharing and streaming, that's not like the smooth experience with discord. also i'm unsure about persistent chat in the long term, i've used matrix for a while and the rooms tend to not last for long amd get 'upgraded' or something (had to click on some button that said something around 'this chatroom has moved'... and couldn't search from the old chatlog properly)
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Fluxer. It's struggling a bit with the influx of users but the dev has been working feverishly to patch, should be smoother at some point this week. Current patch is in testing now.
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