From my digging on alternatives the main contenders are (in no particular order)
Stoat
Essentially 1:1 on discords format
UK based, so its future there is uncertain
Infrastructure is lacking, was crippled by the initial influx after discord’s announcement.
Missing some minor UI and UX features, feels unpolished.
Spacebar
Reverse engineered discord
Greatest potential, IMO, but as of a few days ago all it has is potential.
lacks significant client development, relying on an external client named Fermi, which feels quite amateurish.
XMPP
Highly mature, looks very promising, but lacks any kind of guild/nested channel grouping support which makes it unsuitable for my group, so I didn’t look too deep at it.
Matrix
IMO the most likely discord successor.
Minor functional hiccups, that vary from client to client
Of the clients I tested, Cinny is the most discord like, but I hear commet is closer.
Nested spaces provides the minimum format equivalence.
Fluxer
Slightly sus vibes
Lacks self hosting instructions
Media is non-permanent, which is I guess fair to keep infra costs down, but its unsuitable for my groups media usage habits.
Looks promising, but I’ve not actually tried it given the lack of self hosting instructions.
One thing that’s wormed its way onto the to do list that haunts the back of my mind, is I’d like to see if I could abuse the matrix or XMPP protocols to get some of the nicer discord-like features lime invite links, server side channel ordering, and space membership over channel membership. But that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
XMPP knows invite links, there are even servers which support invite pages which list suitable clients one could use for XMPP. Prosody for example has this module you could enable: mod_invites_page
And then there is also Snikket, which is a pre-configured XMPP server suite (running prosody under the hood) with some nice QoL improvements baked in which you can selfhost as well: Snikket Quick Start Selfhost
While I agree with feeling a bit off , Fluxor seems closest to feature complete. Overall what Stoat has an offer works well. They are updating their infrastructure and so Fluxor.
The Matrix and XMPP are still all over the place. Unless one client comes out to rule them all. And none such really take the crown.
Honestly If there is issues with LLM it might be better to stick with Stoat.
One thing that’s wormed its way onto the to do list that haunts the back of my mind, is I’d like to see if I could abuse the matrix or XMPP protocols to get some of the nicer discord-like features lime invite links
I think I’ve seen invite links being proposed for Matrix, but I don’t remember the status of that idea, and can’t find a relevant MSC at the moment.
Highly mature, looks very promising, but lacks any kind of guild/nested channel grouping support which makes it unsuitable for my group, so I didn’t look too deep at it.
XMPP does, but how advanced depends on the client used. Only the Movim and Dino clients support group voice/video calls at the moment, and Movim is the only client that supports Screensharing (requires a Chromium based browser to screenshare w/audio).
I’m not too sure, I didn’t look terribly deeply on that front since that’s not something my group uses often, and its difficult to test on my own. That said, I believe Matrix does have some level of voice chat support, though AFAIK its more similar to Skype’s calls than Discord’s drop-in/drop-out voice channels. No idea about XMPP though.
From my digging on alternatives the main contenders are (in no particular order)
One thing that’s wormed its way onto the to do list that haunts the back of my mind, is I’d like to see if I could abuse the matrix or XMPP protocols to get some of the nicer discord-like features lime invite links, server side channel ordering, and space membership over channel membership. But that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
EDIT: Forgot Fluxer. Added.
Holy…! Thanks for mentioning Commet this is so much better than Element - I think there is a good chance I can move people to Matrix using this!
XMPP knows invite links, there are even servers which support invite pages which list suitable clients one could use for XMPP. Prosody for example has this module you could enable: mod_invites_page
And then there is also Snikket, which is a pre-configured XMPP server suite (running prosody under the hood) with some nice QoL improvements baked in which you can selfhost as well: Snikket Quick Start Selfhost
While I agree with feeling a bit off , Fluxor seems closest to feature complete. Overall what Stoat has an offer works well. They are updating their infrastructure and so Fluxor.
The Matrix and XMPP are still all over the place. Unless one client comes out to rule them all. And none such really take the crown.
Honestly If there is issues with LLM it might be better to stick with Stoat.
I think I’ve seen invite links being proposed for Matrix, but I don’t remember the status of that idea, and can’t find a relevant MSC at the moment.
This bot looks like it could be helpful for now:
https://github.com/dfuchss/matrix-joinlink
https://www2.matrix.org/blog/2024/05/24/this-week-in-matrix-2024-05-24/#matrixjoinlink
No XMPP clients currently have that feature, but the Movim client is actively working on implementing it, and it should be ready in a few weeks. They recently launched a modest funding campaign to accelerate development.
Can you elaborate on this part?
a chat app that has more feature parity with Discord than any other project, yet:
all this to say, it’s still an incredibly impressive piece of software, but the sus vibes are warranted
Which ones are federated?
I belive just Matrix and XMPP.
Do they have voice chat integration? It’s not a big deal for me, but for a lot apparently it is.
XMPP does, but how advanced depends on the client used. Only the Movim and Dino clients support group voice/video calls at the moment, and Movim is the only client that supports Screensharing (requires a Chromium based browser to screenshare w/audio).
Yes XMPP supports voice. Had for well over a decade, maybe two.
I’m not too sure, I didn’t look terribly deeply on that front since that’s not something my group uses often, and its difficult to test on my own. That said, I believe Matrix does have some level of voice chat support, though AFAIK its more similar to Skype’s calls than Discord’s drop-in/drop-out voice channels. No idea about XMPP though.
Movim.eu seems to be. Rocketchat also claims to federate via matrix