To make it clear to those who are misunderstanding: that’s a list of companies that host matrix for you. They do it at a good price.
If you and your friends chip, it’ll be a few bucks a pop per month to have your own private server with voice chat rooms and video chat rooms.
It’s all opensource and contributes to the ecosystem. Best of all, no age verification because the data is yours.
From everything I’ve seen matrix is not comparable to Discord, but instead like a slightly amped Signal. What am I missing?
Actually I did just ask the same thing, and the TL;DR is that most clients do handle it as signal with group chat folders. Cinny does look like Discord, but currently lacks voice calling. It’s currently web only with PWA support for mobile, though.
Okay, then if it really is not discord, or to be specific, not self-hosted discord (because I don’t care about the upfront cost of self-hosting), then I’m gonna start ignoring these matrix posts because they seem to be trying to convince people who want - someone in your link used burgers as a metaphor - A burger to instead get a hot dog.
I don’t want a hot dog.
Yeah, they all really do feel like “Oh you want to stop playing World of Warcraft, but still want an online game to play? Try Second Life!” and I think that’s partly because there isn’t an app out there that feels like Discord besides Discord. Cinny (Matrix), IRC, and Stoat come close, but none support voice calls at this point, at least that I can find. Matrix itself supports calling (though I think that’s still experimental), but Cinny doesn’t. If it ever ends up supporting voice calls, that will likely end up being the Discord alternative In wouldn’t feel bad recommending.
Until then, though, we don’t really have a true Discord alternative. Just various chat apps that don’t quite hit the mark.
Stoat literally supports voice calls and Matrix has supported 1 on 1 voice calls for a long time and now they are testing group voice chats
I’m sorry but it will be difficult to deliver something that fits all the checkboxes Discord filled without a lot of money behind it.
Following the food analogy, you don’t want a burger, you want a whole buffet with all the foods discord delivered.