Do you prefer XMPP or Matrix, or are you using something else entirely?
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.
EDIT: Forgot Fluxer. Added.
- Fluxer
- Slightly sus vibes
Can you elaborate on this part?
a chat app that has more feature parity with Discord than any other project, yet:
- was supposedly built over the course of five years but commit history was squashed a couple months ago so there’s no way to verify
- was built entirely by one 22yo who hasn’t yet graduated university
- has confirmed LLM usage
- already has a monetization plan very similar to Discord and has raised 300k in one-time funding on hype alone
all this to say, it’s still an incredibly impressive piece of software, but the sus vibes are warranted
- Fluxer
- Stoat
XMPP, hands down.
Not only for me, but for other people. XMPP is leaner, more robust, easier to administer and overall not a nu-protocol, so it’s easier on the staff of the instance operating as well, leaving them more of their allotted time to tend to the community. And with client utilities like Gakim, Conversations and Movim, focusing on the service proper is even easier.
