Personally I got all my friends to move to Element on Matrix. Not all of them are particularly technical, and they still have no problems on Element. I’m inclined to recommend Element / Matrix.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Not entirely related, but why do so many people use Discord? What's the appeal? I only ever used it as a replacement vor teamspeak or ventrilo. And I honestly hate most online games.
I've been using it for several years. I have a small server I use with my IRL friends and it works great.
- Near 100% availabily
- Nice sound quality
- Supports multiple servers for your multiple interests
- UI is amazing
- Works fine on every platform
- Screen sharing / streaming is easy
- Cool to see what your friends are playing
- Free plan is more than enough, you can pay for cosmetics or higher stream quality.
The UI is actually kinda ass, but we all got used to it.
Me and my friends moved to matrix, but we still use discord for streaming.
Compared to the software we were using before such as Skype, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo and Mumble.... The UI is amazing.
I'd happily move to Matrix but I'd lose all the servers for my hobby interests. No point in having both.
+1. It's like an IRC channel but improved and easy to use.
When I started in the online games, we used IRC + TeamSpeak. Now we only use Discord since it has all of them in only one app but it's better (except the ads), easier and you also has a Mobile App.
Ever looked up XMPP ?
And Snikket for super-easy setup and management
Way too few mentions of Jitsi.
I use it with friends, it has good server config, and I'm pushing it on businesses.
they are owned by a Nasdaq-listed company. does that not the defeat the purpose when OP is trying to avoid Wall Street-ownership?
Discord is a completely proprietary walled-garden that bans third-party clients to maintain full control AND (soon) has Wall-Street-ownership.
Jitsi is open-source built with multiple open protocols BUT has Wall-Street-ownership.
Neither is great, but these are two distinctly different situations.
Just self-host it? It's open-source, that will last you a lifetime.
Explain more of this Jitsi, sounds interesting for my business
It's voice and video calling with chat and screensharing. I intend to use it for a language school. It's extendable, for instance you can also self-host a whiteboard, where everyone can draw. You can see the drawing in real time, which is good for asian languages, where direction of the stroke is important.
Free, open-source, packaged in Debian, runs without issues, used it with friends for multi-hour voice chats during gaming nights.
On the server you can configure things like FPS for screenshare. I have yet to adjust that and try streaming video/game through it.
This does sound extremely useful and good.
I'd say the only issues software like this have is there's a lack of beginners guides to self hosting, so people either know too little and instantly have their server botted / hacked, or know enough to be too paranoid and afraid to set up their own server because they know of the risks.
As for me though, I'll probably look into implementing this and play around with it for our DnD group first.
That sounds great, let me know how it works for you.
There is also BigBlueButton if you are looking for another similar project.
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