I've had several people contact me with alternatives, and admittingly they all have have issues or lacking features that make people want to switch. This list is from
@Koi Fish
- Revolt.chat
- Matrix Element
- Slack
- Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, Zulip and other Slack-inspired programs
- Telegram
- Rumble
- Raidcall
- Overtone
One more I haven't seen mentioned so far I'd like to add is
Tox (uTox / qTox that I know)
I haven't given that one a proper run since I haven't seen as many using it,
but it's got voice call, video call, file transfer, Groups, and seems pretty darn secure.
Wasn't Tox down? Regardless, that's more of a Telegram alternative rather than Discord, Voice chat also is unstable.
Also Raidcall isn't online anymore; Overtone has gone under; Element/RocketChat/MatterMost/Zulip et all are literally Slack; Telegram lol, lmao even; Rumble is a video sharing platform; Mumble And Ventrilo are literally just TS3. This list has no Actual Discord alternatives. Those are good programs, but are not alternatives.
Revolt.chat and Nertivia are no-go. Nertivia may be getting better but the lead dev is a redditor that plays OW2 who's drunk with power. Maybe a non-retarded nertivia fork would be nice, especially if federated. While Revolt.chat hasn't had a decent update ever since it launched, it's still shit with non functioning features and place holders.
For all these "alternatives" still miss the mark, I still share Enig's sentiment:
I'm stuck on discord because all other alternatives are made of balsa wood and duct tape and IRCv3 has been in development for decades and yet has gone so fucking slow they didn't even bother with a progress report for 2023
I'd also add that those alternatives are more of Slack alternatives since people seem to just look at the ui an think "uh, it looks like slack, it must be equally as retarded." and give you the bare essential (without allowing for plugins or being foss either) for what a program can be considered as such.
Really, the only one that's relatively close to be an alternative and that it's also FOSS is Nertivia. This isn't an endorsement, because the retard wants to spy on each user more than discord already does.
niiiice and slow on free users to go paid
Just like telegram.
Before someone mentions it:
Retroshare isn't a discord alternative either, it's a federated sharing program more akin to emule or bittorrent. It just so happens to have a group text chat feature.
The only good ones are Telegram and Signal. If you want to know for sure what works you look at what criminals use to do business.
Federated or Decentralized private nodes, most of the times I heard they used something like a very private Mastodon clone; while for chat they'd use a private matrix node without using that retarded piece of shit Element. Tl;dr: "
Matrix lol"
Only downside, and I've mentioned this to other friends in the past who shilled for certain social media. This stuff's only as practical as the users it holds. A social media, without users, does not serve its purpose.
Discord has had a very rocky start too back in 2015, the thing that made people jump over it were the free lobbies (that people keep erroneously referring to as "servers" due to TeamSpeak) and the pseudo social media features. As well as Screensharing, Video Calls, Voice Calls, a semi-decent text chat with markdown and so on. I still prefer Chatango's ui for Text Chat.