I love that Discourse is open. I hate that it’s just horrendous from a usability perspective. Flarum is much better than that, in my opinion, while being way more flexible. Examples:
Comment on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Top three are:
- Discourse
- Rocket.chat
- Matrix
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Evotech@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I find discourse perfectly usable.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Cool 👍️
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Discourse isnt free
And its been described as more of a forum than a chat service
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is misinformation.
You can self host it, for free.
Yttra@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That doesn’t seem to be communicated very clearly on the website, though I could always be missing something.
It also doesn’t seem like the average Discord user is the target audience. The website is for sysadmins, and the goal seems to be selling a Slack/Teams alternative to a business or government organization.
Ontimp@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Rocket.chat uses Matrix though, too. It’s not only Matrix but it makes use of Matrix federation among other things and they built their own Matrix server implementation in TypeScript last year
Ontimp@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Correction they are actually moving away from the Matrix federation scheme in favor of their own federation mechanism to simplify the internal architecture (but they are still supporting Matrix financially apparently :)
redsand@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Jitsi, simplex, mumble, matrix, lemmy.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
I don’t really see how someone can position Discourse as the number one Discord alternative. Surely most people looking to ditch Discord want live chat, audio/video calls, and screen sharing… Or am I just in the minority here?
For the record, I think Discourse looks awesome and even thinking about how I might use it for a project, but I do not see it as a Discord alternative.
markz@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
Lots of communities use discord as a replacement for a forum despite it not being fit for it at all
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Sure, but that’s not an argument for replacing Discord with forums. The two serve entirely different use cases, and should be treated like two entirely separate products.
gloktawasright@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Isn’t it though? A forum wouldn’t do all the things discord does, but the argument is that trying to use discord for a forum was a mistake in the first place. So replacing discord with a forum and then a dedicated chatting app makes sense, no?
JayGray91@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
So much so I fucking hate this phenomenon
karashta@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I also want this suite of things. I stream movies to friends, share games I’m playing…
These are core features to me now in a robust chat client
toynbee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, for at least the first five letters, I can’t even tell the difference.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
A lot of people don’t seem to realize that Discord has a variety of features, and each feature can be more or less useful for different types of communities. The ones I’ve used NEVER used anything but text chat.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
I understand that but even the text chat is a different experience than what Discourse offers. Even people who only used Discord for text chat and want a replacement for that would be better on IRC.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not the text chat they’re referring to. An annoying amount of open so it be projects use Discord as a replacement for forums specifically.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Yeah, clearly everyone loves IRC, that’s why no one uses Discord /s
ieGod@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
IRC isn’t really a replacement either. Discord supports rich multimedia embedding and the servers preserve history (by default anyway).
JayGray91@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I’ll keep you company in the minority, since that’s what I want too
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Live chat is all I ever use but you never know
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I would bet on the screen sharing not being that big of a requirement for most people. Voice and text chats though? Yeah, that’s the minimum.
ne0phyte@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
A lot of people I know regularly use screen sharing through discord or opentalk. Both for work/productivity and while gaming (watching each other, helping, sharing what people are up to etc).
To get people to switch it sadly should support all features: text, voice, video and sending files/images/gifs/videos.
It’s tough.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Sure, a lot of people use it, because it exists. How many of those people would actually say it’s a requirement to be built into it though? There’s plenty of other options for screen sharing they could use. I don’t know though. Maybe a lot of people actually do consider it a critical feature. I doubt it though. I’ve used it a few times with my group, but it’s only ever a “do you want to see this?” It’s just a bonus, not a requirement.
Cheems@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I used to use to for audio calls now I use it more for a forum.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
I thought Discourse was bought by Roblox, merged into Roblox, and then discontinued outside of Roblox?
QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
You’re thinking of Guilded.
Looks like Roblox forced everyone using Guilder to suddenly have a Roblox account in 2024, and then Guilder officially shut down about 2 months ago (end of 2025).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilded