Discord alternatives again...
I'd love to self-host a discord alternative that provides: chats (DMs and servers with channels), audio/video calls (group calls, DM calls, for video: streaming primarily), typical file sharing, desktop and mobile app (Linux, Win, Android). No need for…
I'd love to self-host a discord alternative that provides: chats (DMs and servers with channels), audio/video calls (group calls, DM calls, for video: streaming primarily), typical file sharing, desktop and mobile app (Linux, Win, Android). No need for forums, bots or the likes. Also no particularly crazy need for the newest advancements in privacy features. (Edit: Also don't really need any federation capabilities.) It's supposed to handle about 5-10 people (accounts). Cool to have, but totally optional: pubkey-based login? I'd like to just put it on a Hetzner VPS or something. I've tried getting into Matrix servers (Synapse, Tuwunel, Conduwuit), but they seem... just incredibly complicated for what they are. I understand that there is elevated complexity behind projects like these, but... I don't know, I would still expect things to be somewhat less convoluted at least? Either way: Do you have any other alternatives I could look at to fill my personal niche here? If there really is no one solution, I'm fine with cutting up my needs to multiple solutions for the sake of relative simplicity.
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Thanks for the recc, I'll take a look at it. Oh yeah, and also don't really need any federation, forgot to mention that. Totally fine if it stays private/local.
And even developed from a compatriot, lovely. Thanks for the recommendation, this looks very promising.
True true, I kinda want federation so I can host a server and invite people to it without me having to be their admin essentially :3
What server implementation did you use for Matrix?
Personally if I were to hoat something federation is the ladt thing I would want, it would serve no purpose for me, the goal is to have a self hosted platform where friends can join and use the voice chat for gaming and chat, I would see no point and even a downside with federation. But so long as it is something that can be completely opted out I guess it is fine
I built a docker-compose stack of matrixdotorg/synapse, livekit/livekit-server, and element-hq/lk-jwt-service. The latter two are for providing live voice and video chat functionality.
Stoat has some really odd anti-privacy choices. You cannot use email aliases with it at all. Even premium/paid ones like Proton/SimpleLogin. Devs hiding behind it is to combat spam, and ignore any discussion about some of the aliases requiring paid accounts to access.
Stoat has some really odd anti-privacy choices. You cannot use email aliases with it at all. Even premium/paid ones like Proton/SimpleLogin. Devs hiding behind it is to combat spam, and ignore any discussion about some of the aliases requiring paid accounts to access.
Fluxer looks to be a great up and comer, it has self hosting now, but, it does not yet have federation , its on their roadmap though
You can send files in matrix
Fluxer has a lot of AI junk going on, which can be a deal breaker for many people
I’ve got a self hosted Matrix instance. It checks all your boxes except for file sharing, though that’s just an “I’m not sure” from me because I’ve never even thought about that use case.
Here you go buddy https://github.com/hackthedev/dcts-shipping/
https://chatto.run/ recently did the rounds on some tech sites about being open sourced. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising.
Stoat and fluxer are looking like great growing projects worth checking out
I've found the hardest part isn't replacing Discord's chat. It's replacing voice, screen sharing, and the overall polish in one package.
Fluxer looks promising I think, have not tried it yet. Currently running https://sharkord.com/ on my VPS, very easy to set up, very lightweight and user is managed by invites so I'm not worried by having it public facing. Thou it lacks mobile apps and is a bit wonky on the mobile web - though it works. That said, I barely use it for chat. Mainly voice and screen sharing with a select few.
Fermi, an app I'm building is trying to be a discord alternative, there's a public instance if you're interested in trying it out, though like many alternatives, there's not yet a mobile app due to lack of mobile devs. (well, there are some, but none are particularly complete yet) And VCs are on their way.
I work on one of these myself (Tusile, tusile.com), so grain of salt, but it lines up with almost everything on your list. It's Discord style: DMs plus servers with channels, group voice and video calls, DM calls, screen sharing for the streaming side, file sharing. Voice and video run on LiveKit. Desktop apps for Linux and Windows, mobile app on Android (iOS and Mac too if you ever want them). The main thing for you is probably the self-hosting. It's a docker compose stack you drop on a single VPS, so a small Hetzner box handles 5-10 people fine. It's intentionally not the Synapse rabbit hole you ran into with Matrix, you're not standing up three separate services just to get voice working. The one honest gap: no bots, but you already said you don't need them, and no pubkey login, so if that optional one ends up mattering it's not your tool. Everything else on your list it does. Happy to help if you get stuck setting it up.
My group of friends and I moved from Discord to Mattermost. A few months back we switched to Matrix mainly due to some changes to Mattermost and how they just seemed like they were on their way to switching to an entirely paid service(we could be wrong but seemed like the direction they were heading). Matrix has had some ups and downs mainly with the clients as they all seem to be built by developers, so are not as pretty and/or user friendly. But it’s getting better.
Hate auch schnautze voll von discord . Hab nich hingesetzt eine tapermonkey gebaut als chatui als Backend einen Quart Server mit fast MCP als Modul um meine chatverlaufe auch KI geben zu lassen. Lassen es auf Huggingface laufen, ich weiß übertrieben aber. Ej für unsere Gamer Community top ;) Micro Code und natürlich Plasma 4 Design. War am überlegen es auf GitHub zu knallen. Besser als diese ganzen riesen Pakete wo man nicht weiß wo der nächste Bug steckt.
Stoat looks interesting, haven't personally used it yet though - I bookmarked it after seeing it on the proxmox community scripts list. Seems like it has a server component and and bunch of apps you can use with it.
Mattermost, is a good option.
I use matrix with Element client. In my opinion this is the best option because of federation and all the features you requested. File sharing is available too. Another alternative is Stoat chat.