this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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I mostly lurk here, and I know we've had this discussion come up a number of times since Discord's age verification changes were announced, but I figured this video offers value for the walkthrough and comparative analysis. Like me, the video authors aren't seasoned self-hosters, and I've still got a lot to learn. Stoat and Fluxer both look appealing to me for my needs, but Stoat seemingly needs self-hosted servers to route through their master server (unless I'm missing something stupid) and I replicated the 404 for Fluxer's self-hosting documentation seen in the video, so it's looking like I'm leaning toward a Matrix server of some kind. Hopefully everyone looking for the Discord exit ramp is closer to finding it after this video.

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 20 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

It comes down to Fluxer and Stoat. Or just Stoat if you dislike Fluxer's AI-assisted development.

One thing is clear, both are currently working great and are the closest thing to Discord's core features.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 16 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

It's definitely going to be one of these two. Matrix and XMPP are just too much for casual users, and there's no one client for either of them which supports all of Discord's core features.

Out of those two, Fluxer feels like the better choice right now, but I do wish they'd take a stronger stance against LLMs. Stoat feels clunkier, buggier, and feels like it's getting left behind.

[–] parzival@lemmy.org 1 points 7 hours ago

I feel like comet has all of discords features, no? 

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Element supports all of discords core features.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Last I checked it doesn't keep channels in a server organized and always sorts by recent activity. I may be mistaken but I don't believe it supported screenshare audio yet either

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 1 points 2 minutes ago

These are core features? For me core feature is channels, audio/video call and screen share and element can do all of that.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 2 points 11 hours ago

Damn it this is the first I'm hearing about Fluxer's AI development.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Did you run into the same problems I did with self-hosting? And if not, how did you avoid them?

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Are you talking about self hosting for fluxer? They explicitly state in their documentation they don’t want people using the current version because they’re doing a rewrite, so you should wait.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, Fluxer's self hosting documentation 404s, and Stoat seems to still rely on a central server, which isn't self hosted enough for my needs. It's cool that both of them are looking good in the near future, but I want something I can start using in the next few months.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 0 points 9 hours ago

Honestly if you’re that worried about it, I’d just wait and not use anything. Instead of wasting time trying to find a product that probably won’t get better, you can wait and get Fluxer when they make it ready.

Or you could pull stoat and modify the code yourself.

[–] ttyybb@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

I've had the most people switch over to element (a full 2 people plus myself)