We have been online for more than 1.5 years. Back when we started, we didn't see Discord alternatives popping up left and right, so we created our own. Nowadays, there are like 10 of them popping up every single day, most of those are below par and completely usable. If you like to try out a new one you can give us a try no stress haha bye
Cool. I would like to try it, but it will probably take a considerable amount of time to convince my circle of friends to migrate to this platform en masse.
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
I have a lot of chatting applications that all demonstrated that to me. The most common way was having another party indicate the app as a communication option
What a weird and entitled position. This is a product for people who create or manage communities, not people who demand to be shown there is already a community there
Because it reduces the switching cost because users don't have to learn a new interface. Discord has shown that its UI is at least capable of being used by hundreds of millions of users so it is not a bad starting point.
That's exactly it. A lot of users are likely emotionally attached and trapped to their Nitro garbage and feel like they "invested" far into the cult by now. Giving them a way out is important if you want to acquire that market.
Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
Fair point, opinions are not truth. That said there are lots of mods out there for it with substantial (many millions) of users where their entire reason for existing is taking control of the UI.
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
I'm always surprised to hear people hate Discord's UI. I think it's fine.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
Well, I do hate the stupid upsells, but the entire Discord UI just feels... off. I can't really place a finger on it, but I just don't like it. (Maybe there is a bit of a UX nag causing these feelings as well? I'm not sure.)
I stand to gain nothing and I don't even think it's popular sentiment.
For a new user it's completely alien. Trying to get a coworker to try discord for the first time is a nightmare.
It tries to solve so much in such a condensed bar on the side. Why are DM listed "as" a server. I hate the notification system for transient server joins. I have no opinion of the channel system. Why can't you read discord threads of a public discord without joining the server and accepting the posting rules? They're trying to emulate forums but it's a huge PITA to just read (in a RO state, even).
Idk lots of complaints, network effect is a bitch.
Totally, I suspect a lot of people who preach discord here use it for fun and hobby, like some book club or small community.
Try using it at scale, for channeling communities, engaging with users, bots, marketing, and for work with streaming, video, rooms, voice rooms, moderation, etc.
There is an entire universe, even large businesses, built just around navigating Discord for good and for worse.
I log into Discord maybe once a fortnight to check what's going, and every time I land in a channel, it shows me the newest handful of messages, and I need to scroll back endlessly to get back to where I actually left off.
It's fine as a kind of replacement for forums, but I don't like it at all for chat and community. I find Discord admins always tend to create 5 trillion channels which each get about one message per week. And then whine when you haven't sorted your messages in to the most relevant channels.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
Damn this is gorgeous. That said, how can one try something if no one is there? I can sway my team to move it, but not my audience. Discord still owns the market as a medium to reach an audience.
While it's great to have alternatives, I suspect a lot us are really only interested in forkable open alternatives (like Matrix / Element), as most concerns about Discord are tied with it being a private company.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
Please please please someone take over discord and their use base. Their nitro and ads is the most toxic nonsense stuff I have ever had the displeasure to work with.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
There is so little advertising on discord that I find it hilarious you are so upset about a few notifications here and there about nitro and other aesthetic perks which are basically entirely optional
A few notifications here and there? I'm not sure I can agree with you. It's a daily persistent thing that there is no way to disable and the constant dark patterns.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
I'm actually confused about what you mean with "daily persistent thing". I see a discord popup on start about a new feature or ad for some collaboration maybe once a month. Most days it just starts and brings me to the last server I was in.
There are 3rd party ads in Discord now, and they are probably going to expand as an ad platform. I think this is what the parent comment was upset about.
That too, I have to be on Nitro because of work. (Managing communities, streaming resolution, etc), and the level of ads triple after being a customer. Even worse if you need to blend in like adopting some of the customization since the cult goes deep.
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
> Please please please someone take over discord and their use base
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
I've been dealing with this exact problem this week. For being such an established protocol with such strong servers, the open source clients available are shockingly undercooked.
I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish.
I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.
I'm just ready for something new, personally. I don't really like Discord's vibe of paying for avatar skins? Gross. And paying for custom emojis? Super gross. Yuck.
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
Yeah, the RAM numbers are off, those are from different builds, and we never synced them. my bad, fixing today. And it's two of us and the landing page got like a day of attention because everything else felt more urgent. not really a defense, just what happened. Same reason it's nowhere near as rich as Discord's site.
"free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it.
Is this P2P, or hosted on proprietary servers? How is it funded? I don't like ads and I like free things, but "no ads, free forever" doesn't make me confident in its long term stability.
yeah 30 N Gould is a registered agent. We registered a US entity mainly for stripe + dmca since users upload stuff which content tons of restriced contents. it was the cheapest way to do it without a US office.
Why do companies like this continue to promise "No Ads Ever"? How do they plan enough money to support their service? Video sharing is incredibly expensive, even Discord is unlikely profitable between their advertising campaigns and server boosting revenue.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
Someone else here also mentioned Chatto [0] which seems far easier to self-host than Fluxer, though both appear to be quite similar to Discord in overall functionality. I've played with Chatto a bit and it seems surprisingly solid overall thus far.
No one’s squads give 2 shits what language their app is written in. The LLMisms are so annoying to read and tell me nothing genuine about what it’d be like to use it.
[OP] acley | 22 hours ago
Varelion | 21 hours ago
altilunium | 21 hours ago
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
bitmasher9 | 21 hours ago
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
apetresc | 21 hours ago
bitmasher9 | 21 hours ago
kennywinker | 13 hours ago
LorenDB | 21 hours ago
charcircuit | 21 hours ago
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
virgil_disgr4ce | 21 hours ago
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
tekchip | 21 hours ago
Sohcahtoa82 | 21 hours ago
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
virgil_disgr4ce | 21 hours ago
LorenDB | 21 hours ago
saintfire | 21 hours ago
I stand to gain nothing and I don't even think it's popular sentiment.
For a new user it's completely alien. Trying to get a coworker to try discord for the first time is a nightmare.
It tries to solve so much in such a condensed bar on the side. Why are DM listed "as" a server. I hate the notification system for transient server joins. I have no opinion of the channel system. Why can't you read discord threads of a public discord without joining the server and accepting the posting rules? They're trying to emulate forums but it's a huge PITA to just read (in a RO state, even).
Idk lots of complaints, network effect is a bitch.
hmokiguess | 20 hours ago
Try using it at scale, for channeling communities, engaging with users, bots, marketing, and for work with streaming, video, rooms, voice rooms, moderation, etc.
There is an entire universe, even large businesses, built just around navigating Discord for good and for worse.
Turn it into a protocol.
jamesfinlayson | 18 hours ago
Gigachad | 21 hours ago
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
theturtletalks | 21 hours ago
0. https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
arikrahman | 21 hours ago
axus | 21 hours ago
therealpygon | 18 hours ago
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
nelsonfigueroa | 21 hours ago
soundworlds | 21 hours ago
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
adzm | 21 hours ago
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
xboxnolifes | 18 hours ago
hmokiguess | 18 hours ago
1. Nitro Home 2. Shop 3. Quests
And hovering on users often brings up upsell.
xboxnolifes | 17 hours ago
hresvelgr | 21 hours ago
edit: grammar
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
Ekaros | 21 hours ago
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
hmokiguess | 21 hours ago
Ekaros | 21 hours ago
esseph | 20 hours ago
Wwooooooowwwww I never thought I'd read that or even a similar statement in my entire life!
nickthegreek | 21 hours ago
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
axus | 21 hours ago
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
fishgoesblub | 21 hours ago
pavo-etc | 19 hours ago
I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish.
I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.
s0ss | 21 hours ago
bellowsgulch | 21 hours ago
kennywinker | 21 hours ago
dymk | 21 hours ago
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
Varelion | 7 hours ago
[OP] acley | 6 hours ago
"free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it.
Thanks for the feedback tho :)
ludston | 21 hours ago
Madmallard | 21 hours ago
Not interested
jonstaab | 21 hours ago
I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social)
hatthew | 21 hours ago
jimmygrapes | 21 hours ago
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam...
https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec...
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-reg...
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.
[OP] acley | 7 hours ago
muwtyhg | 21 hours ago
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
Apreche | 21 hours ago
Cider9986 | 20 hours ago
blooalien | 19 hours ago
[0]: https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
anon7000 | 19 hours ago