Came across this on the r/selfhosted community. Still very much in the alpha stages, but it’s already got a Docker image you can try out for yourself, or try out the demo server.
Tried it earlier today, couldn’t get the voice/video chat to work right away on my self-hosted setup but the real-time chat was very snappy. Looks promising.
Why use this over Matrix?
Drop-in voice channels are a requirement for a discord alternative, Matrix does not have them. AFAIK you still need to call an entire channel to start a voice chat.
Im surprised as how many people discount this feature. Sometimes I sit in voice chat in my small Discord server alone for hours because nobody would show up if nobody was around.
We’re all adults with jobs and responsibilities and shit, we don’t want to have to dial people in to shoot the shit late at night. That would feel like a chore.
An alternative with no drop in voice chat is a non starter for my group.
The user experience for matrix is absolutely dog shit. Anyone who says otherwise is huffing copium.
I have been setting up matrix servers and testing every desktop and mobile client. I cannot present this to my discord group as an alternative.
As much as I want to love matrix, it is a huuuuge pain to set up & maintain.
Not really, been running Synapse for 5ish years and I barely spend any time on it. Once you configure it then it just works
With voice/video or just text?
Both, but since last year I’m using Element’s public voice/video server instead, works fine for me and less to maintain ;)